ROAMING 


THROUGH 


THE 


WEST 


INDIES 


HARRY  A.  FRANCK 


X 


THE  LIBRARY    , 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY' 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 

IN  MEMORY  OF 
EDWIN  CORLE 

PRESENTED  BY 
JEAN  CORLE 


ROAMING  THROUGH 
THE  WEST  INDIES 


ROAMING  THROUGH 
THE  WEST  INDIES 


BY 

HARRY  A.  FRANCK 

Author  of  "A  Vagabond  Journey  Around  the  World," 

"Zone  Policeman  88,"  "Vagabonding 

Down  the  Andes,"  etc.,  etc. 


BLUE  RIBBON  BOOKS 

NEW  YORK 


Copyright,  1920,  by 
THE  CENTUBY  Go. 


PRINTED     IN     THE     UNITED    STATES    OF    AMERICA 

PRINTED    BY    THE    CORNWALL    PRESS,    INC. 
CORNWALL,    N.    Y. 


TO 

MY  WIFE,  RACHEL, 

WITH  WHOM  THIS  WAS  THE  BEGINNING 
OF  A  FAR  LONGER  JOURNEY,  AND 

TO 

MY  SON,  HARRY, 
WHO  JOINED  US  ON  THE  WAY 


2035404 


FOREWARNING 

Some  years  ago  I  made  a  tramping  trip  around  the  world  for  my  own 
pleasure.  Friends  coaxed  me  to  set  it  down  on  paper  and  new  friends 
were  kind  enough  to  read  it.  Since  then  they  have  demanded  more  — 
at  least  so  the  publishers  say  —  but  always  specifying  that  it  shall  be  on 
foot.  Now,  I  refuse  to  be  dictated  to  as  to  how  I  shall  travel;  I  will 
not  be  bullied  into  tramping  when  I  wish  to  ride.  The  journey  here- 
with set  forth  is,  therefore,  among  other  things,  a  physical  protest 
against  that  attempted  coercion,  a  proof  that  I  do  not  need  to  walk 
unless  I  choose  to  do  so.  To  make  broken  resolutions  impossible,  I 
picked  out  a  trip  that  could  not  be  done  on  foot.  It  would  be  difficult 
indeed  to  walk  through  the  West  Indies.  Then,  to  make  doubly  sure, 
I  took  with  me  a  newly  acquired  wife  —  and  we  brought  back  a  newly 
acquired  son,  though  that  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  present  story. 

I  will  not  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  I  abjured  footing  it  entirely.  As  a 
further  proof  of  personal  liberty  I  walked  when  and  where  the  spirit 
moved  me  —  and  the  element  underfoot  was  willing.  But  I  wish  it 
distinctly  understood  from  the  outset  that  this  is  no  "  walking  trip." 
Once  having  broken  the  friends  who  flatter  me  with  their  attention  of 
expecting  me  to  confine  myself  to  the  prehistoric  form  of  locomotion  — 
I  shall  probably  fake  to  the  road  again  to  relieve  a  chronic  foot -itch. 

The  following  pages  do  not  pretend  to  "  cover "  the  West  Indies. 
They  are  made  up  of  the  random  pickings  of  an  eight-months'  tour  of 
the  Antilles,  during  which  every  island  of  importance  was  visited,  but 
they  are  put  together  rather  for  the  entertainment  of  the  armchair 
traveler  than  for  the  information  of  the  traveler  in  the  flesh.  While  the 
latter  may  find  in  them  some  points  to  jot  down  in  his  itinerary,  he 
should  depend  rather  on  the  several  thorough  and  orderly  books  that 
have  been  written  for  his  special  benefit. 

HARRY  A.  FRANCK. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I     OVERLAND  TO  THE  WEST  INDIES 3 

THE  AMERICAN  WEST  INDIES 
II     RANDOM  SKETCHES  OF  HAVANA .25 

III  CUBA  FROM  WEST  TO  EAST 50 

IV  THE  WORLD'S  SUGAR-BOWL 76 

V    UNDER  THE  PALM-TREE  OF  HAITI 106 

VI     THE  DEATH  OF  CHARLEMAGNE 128 

VII    HITHER  AND  YON  IN  THE  HAITIAN  BUSH 149 

VIII     THE  LAND  OF  BULLET-HOLES 189 

IX    TRAVELS  IN  THE  CIBAO 207 

X     SANTO  DOMINGO  UNDER  AMERICAN  RULE 229 

XI     OUR  PORTO  Rico 256 

XII    WANDERING  ABOUT  BORINQUEN 280 

XIII  IN  AND  ABOUT  OUR  VIRGIN  ISLANDS 304 

THE  BRITISH  WEST  INDIES 

XIV  THE  CARIBBEE  ISLANDS .  339 

XV    "  LITTLE  ENGLAND  " 360 

XVI     TRINIDAD,  THE  LAND  OF  ASPHALT 381 

XVII    AFRICAN  JAMAICA 403 

THE  FRENCH  WEST  INDIES  AND  THE  OTHERS 

XVIII     GUADELOUPE  AND  DEPENDENCIES 439 

XIX    RAMBLES  IN  MARTINIQUE 449 

XX    ODDS  AND  ENDS  IN  THE  CARIBBEAN 475 

ix 


ROAMING  THROUGH  THE 
WEST  INDIES 


ROAMING  THROUGH  THE 
WEST  INDIES          f  : 

CHAPTER  I 

OVERLAND  TO  THE   WEST   INDIES 

WE  concluded  that  if  we  were  to  spend  half  a  year  or  more 
rambling  through  the  West  Indies  we  would  get  sea-water 
enough  without  taking  to  the  ships  before  it  was  necessary. 
Our  first  dream  was  to  wander  southward  in  the  sturdy,  if  middle- 
aged,  gasolene  wagon  we  must  otherwise  leave  behind,  abandoning  it  for 
what  it  would  bring  when  the  mountains  of  central  Cuba  grew  too  diffi- 
cult for  its  waning  vigor.  But  the  tales  men  told  of  southern  highways 
dampened  our  ardor  for  that  particular  species  of  adventure.  They 
were  probably  exaggerated  tales.  Looking  back  upon  the  route  from 
the  eminence  of  automobile-infested  Havana,  we  are  of  the  impression 
that  such  a  trip  would  have  been  marred  only  by  some  rather  serious 
jolting  in  certain  parts  of  the  Carolinas  and  southern  Georgia,  and  a 
moderately  expensive  freight-bill  from  the  point  where  lower  Florida 
turns  to  swamps  and  islands.  If  our  people  of  the  South  carry  out  the 
ambitious  highway  plans  that  are  now  being  widely  agitated,  there  is  no 
reason  that  the  West  Indian  traveler  of  a  year  or  two  hence  should 
hesitate  to  set  forth  in  his  own  car. 

The  rail-routes  from  the  northeastern  states  are  three  in  number, 
converging  into  one  at  something  over  five  hundred  miles  from  the  end 
of  train  travel.  Those  to  whom  haste  is  necessary  or  more  agreeable 
than  leisure  may  cover  the  distance  from  our  greatest  to  our  southern- 
most city  in  forty-eight  hours,  and  be  set  down  in  Havana  the  following 
dawn.  But  with  a^few  days  to  spare  the  broken  journey  is  well  worth 
the  enhanced  price  and  trouble.  A  truer  perspective  is  gained  by 
following  the  gradual  change  that  increasing  length  of  summer  gives 
the  human  race  rather  than  by  springing  at  once  from  the  turmoil  of 
New  York  to  the  regions  where  winter  is  only  a  rumor  and  a  hear-say. 
In  the  early  days  of  October  the  land  journey  southward  is  like  the 
running  backward  of  a  film  depicting  nature's  processes.  The  rich 

3 


4  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

autumn  colors  and  the  light  overcoats  of  Pennsylvania  advance  gradu^ 
ally  to  the  browning  foliage  and  the  wrapless  comfort  of  the  first 
autumn  breezes,  then  within  a  few  hours  to  the  verdant  green  and 
simpler  garb  of  full  summer.  There  are  reservations,  however,  in  the 
change  of  human  dress,  which  does  not  keep  pace  with  that  of  the 
landscape.  Our  Southerners  seem  to  be  ruled  in  sartorial  matters 
rather  by  the  dictators  of  New  York  fashions  than  by  the  more  fitting 
criterion  of  nature,  and  the  glistening  new  felt  fedora  persists  far 
beyond  the  point  where  the  lighter  covering  would  seem  more  suitable 
to  time  and  place. 

To  the  Northerner  the  first  item  of  interest  is  apt  to  be  the  sudden 
segregation  of  races  in  the  trains  leaving  Washington  for  the  South. 
From  the  moment  he  surreptitiously  sheds  his  vest  as  he  rumbles 
across  the  Potomac  the  traveler  finds  his  intercourse  with  his  African 
fellow-citizens,  be  they  jet  black  or  pale  yellow,  circumscribed  by  an 
impregnable  wall  that  is  to  persist  until  all  but  a  narrow  strip  of  his 
native  land  has  shrunk  away  behind  him.  Only  as  superior  to  inferior, 
as  master  to  servant,  or  as  a  curiosity  akin  to  that  of  the  supercilious 
voyager  toward  the  "  natives "  of  some  foreign  land,  is  his  contact 
henceforth  with  the  other  race.  Stern  placards  point  out  the  division 
that  must  be  maintained  in  public  buildings  or  conveyances ;  custom 
serves  as  effectually  in  private  establishments ;  the  very  city  directories 
fetch  up  their  rear  with  the  "  Colored  Department." 

The  tourist's  first  impression  of  Richmond  will  largely  depend  on 
whether  his  train  sets  him  down  at  the  disreputable  Main  Street  station 
or  at  the  splendid  new  Union  Depot  on  the  heights  of  Broad  Street. 
Unfortunately,  the  latter  is  as  yet  no  more  nearly  "  union  "  than  it  is, 
in  spite  of  a  persistent  American  misnomer,  a  "  depot,"  and  his 
chances  of  escaping  the  medieval  landing-place  are  barely  more  than 
"  fifty-fifty."  But  his  second  notion  of  the  erstwhile  capital  of  the 
Confederacy  cannot  but  be  favorable,  unless  his  tastes  run  more  to  the 
picturesque  than  to  modern  American  civilization.  He  may  at  this 
particular  season  grumble  at  a  sweltering  tropical  heat  that  appears 
long  before  he  bargained  for  it,  but  the  hospitable  Richmonder  quickly 
appeases  his  wrath  in  this  regard  by  explaining  that  some  malignant 
cause,  ranging  from  the  disturbance  of  the  earth's  orbit  by  the  war 
just  ended  to  a  boiling  Gulf  Stream,  has  given  the  South  the  hottest 
autumn  in  —  I  hesitate  to  say  how  many  decades.  Nor,  if  he  is  new 
to  the  life  below  Mason  and  Dixon's  Line,  will  he  escape  a  certain 
surprise  at  finding  how  green  is  still  the  memory  of  the  Confederacy. 


OVERLAND  TO  THE  WEST  INDIES  5 

The  Southerner  may  have  forgiven,  but  he  has  not  forgotten,  nor 
does  he  intend  that  his  grandchildren  shall  do  so. 

In  that  endless  stretch  of  sand,  cotton,  and  pine-trees  which  is 
locally  known  as  "  Nawth  Cahlina,  sah,"  there  are  other  ways  of  pass- 
ing the  time  than  by  watching  the  endless  unrolling  of  a  sometimes 
monotonous  landscape.  One  can  get  into  conversation,  for  instance, 
with  the  train-crew  far  more  easily  than  in  the  more  frigid  North,  and 
listen  for  hours  to  more  or  less  verdant  anecdotes,  which  the  inimitable 
Southern  dialect  alone  makes  worth  the  hearing.  Or,  if  wise  enough  to 
abandon  the  characterless  cosmopolitan  Pullman  for  the  local  atmos- 
phere of  the  day  coach,  one  may  catch  such  scraps  as  these  —  of  special 
interest  to  big-game  hunters —  from  the  lips  of  fellow-passengers: 

"  Say,  d'  you  hear  about  Bud  Hampton  ?  " 

"  What  Bud  done  now  ?  " 

"  Why,  las'  week  Bud  Hampton  shot  a  buck  niggah  't  weighed  ovah 
two  hunderd  pound !  " 

This  particular  species  of  quarry  seemed  to  grow  blacker  with  each 
succeeding  state.  The  two  urchins  in  one-piece  garments  who  lugged 
our  hand-bags  up  the  slope  in  Columbia  made  coal  seem  of  a  pale 
tint  by  comparison.  At  the  corner  of  a  main  street  so  business-bent 
as  to  require  the  constant  attention  of  a  traffic  policeman  they  steered  us 
toward  the  door  of  a  somewhat  weather-worn  establishment. 

"  This  the  best  hotel  ?  "  I  queried,  a  bit  suspicious  that  the  weight 
of  their  burdens  had  warped  their  judgment.  "  How  about  that  one 
down  the  street  ?  "  It  was  a  building  of  very  modern  aspect,  looming 
ten  full  stories  into  the  brilliant  Southern  heavens. 

"  Dat  ain'  no  hotel,  sah,"  cried  the  two  in  one  breath,  rolling  their 
snow-white  eyeballs,  their  black  toes  seeming  to  wriggle  with  pride  at 
the  magnificence  it  presented,  "  dat  's  de  sky-scrapah!  " 

It  was  in  Columbia  that  we  felt  for  the  first  time  irrevocably  in 
the  South.  Richmond  had  been  merely  an  American  city  with  a 
Southern  atmosphere;  South  Carolina's  capital  was  the  South  itself, 
despite  its  considerable  veneer  of  modern  Americanism.  One  must 
look  at  three  faces  to  find  one  indubitably  white.  Clusters  of  ma- 
hogany-red sugar-cahes  lolled  in  shady  corners,  enticing  the  black 
brethren  to  exercise  their  powerful  white  teeth.  Goats  drowsed  in 
patches  of  sand  protected  from  the  insistent  sunshine.  Motormen 
raised  their  caps  with  one  hand  and  brought  their  dashing  conveyances 
to  a  sudden  halt  with  the  other  at  the  very  feet  of  their  "  lady  acquaint- 
ances," whose  male  escorts  returned  the  greeting  with  equal  solemnity. 


6  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

I  puzzled  for  some  time  to  know  what  far-distant  city  this  one,  with 
its  red  soil  stretching  away  to  suburban  nothingness  from  the  points 
where  the  street  paving  petered  out,  with  its  goats  and  sugar-cane,  its 
variegated  complexions,  and  frank  contentment  with  life,  was  insistently 
recalling  to  memory.  Then  all  at  once  it  came  to  me.  Purged  of  its 
considerable  American  bustle,  Columbia  would  bear  a  striking  resem- 
blance to  Asuncion,  capital  of  far-off  Paraguay.  Even  the  wide-open 
airiness  of  its  legislative  halls,  drowsing  in  the  excusable  inoccupancy 
of  what  was  still  mid-summer  despite  the  calendar,  carried  the  imagina- 
tion back  to  the  land  of  the  Guarani. 

An  un-Northern  spaciousness  was  characteristic  of  the  chief  hostelry, 
with  its  ample  chambers,  its  broad  lounging-room,  its  generously 
gaping  spitoons,  offering  not  too  exacting  a  target  to  the  inattentive 
fire  of  Southern  marksmanship.  The  easy-going  temperament  of  its 
management  came  as  a  relief  from  the  unflinching  rule-of-thumb  back 
over  the  horizon  behind  us.  The  reign  of  the  old-fashioned  "  American 
plan,"  synonymous  with  eating  when  and  what  the  kitchen  dictates 
rather  than  leaving  the  guest  a  few  shreds  of  initiative,  had  begun 
again  and  was  to  persist  for  a  thousand  miles  southward.  But  can 
some  trustworthy  authority  tell  us  what  enactment  requires  that  the 
"  choicest  room "  of  the  "  best  hotel"  of  every  American  city  be 
placed  at  the  exact  junction-point  of  the  most  successful  attempt  to 
concentrate  all  its  twenty-four  hours  of  uproar?  I  ask  not  in  wrath, 
for  time  and  better  slumber  have  assuaged  that,  but  out  of  mere 
academic  curiosity.  In  the  good,  old  irresponsible  days  of  my  "  hobo  " 
youth  the  "  jungle  "  beyond  the  railroad  yards  was  far  preferable  to  this 
aristocratic  Bedlam. 

The  "sky-scrapah "  loomed  behind  us  for  half  an  hour  or  more 
across  the  mighty  expanse  of  rolling  sand-and-pine-tree  world,  with 
its  distance-purple  tinge  and  its  suggestion  of  the  interior  of  Brazil, 
which  fled  northward  on  the  next  lap  of  our  journey.  The  cotton- 
fields  which  interspersed  the  wilderness  might  have  seemed  patches  of 
daisies  to  the  casual  glance,  rather  sparse  and  thirsty  daisies,  for  this 
year  the  great  Southern  crop  had  sadly  disappointed  its  sponsors. 
Powder-dry  country  roads  of  reddish  sand  straggled  along  through 
the  endless  stretches  of  scrub-pines,  carrying  here  and  there  the  sagging 
buggy  and  gaunt  and  dust-streaked  horse  of  former  days.  I  relegate 
the  equine  means  of  transportation  to  the  past  advisedly,  for  his 
doom  was  apparent  even  in  these  sparsely  cultivated  and  thinly  peopled 


OVERLAND  TO  THE  WEST  INDIES  7 

regions.  Before  a  little  unpainted,  wooden  negro  church  that  drifted 
by  us  there  clustered  twenty-eight  automobiles,  with  a  bare  half-dozen 
steeds  drooping  limply  on  their  weary  legs  in  the  patches  of  shade  the 
machines  afforded  them.  King  Cotton,  abetted  by  his  royal  contempo- 
raries overseas,  has  drawn  no  color-line  in  deluging  his  favors  on 
his  faithful  subjects.  Forests  of  more  genuine  trees  replaced  the  scrub 
growth  for  long  spaces  farther  on;  here  and  there  compact  rectangles 
of  superlatively  green  sugar-cane  contrasted  with  the  dead-brown 
patches  of  shriveled  corn.  In  the  smoking  compartment  of  the  coach 
placarded  "  White  "  shirt-sleeves  and  open  collars  were  the  rule,  but 
the  corresponding  section  of  the  "  Colored  "  car  indulged  in  no  such 
disheveled  comfort.  The  negroes  of  the  South  seem  more  consistent 
followers  of  Beau  Brummel  than  their  white  neighbors. 

We  descended  at  Savannah  in  a  hopeful  frame  of  mind,  for  a  recent 
report  announced  it  the  most  nearly  reasonable  in  its  food  prices  of  the 
fifty  principal  cities  of  our  United  States.  Georgia's  advantage  in  the 
contest  with  starvation  was  soon  apparent.  At  the  desk  of  the  hotel 
overlooking  a  semi-tropical  plaza  the  startled  newcomer  found  staring 
him  in  the  face  a  dire  threat  of  incarceration,  in  company  with  the 
recipient,  if  he  so  far  forgot  himself  as  to  offer  a  gratuity.  There  was 
something  strangely  familiar,  however,  about  the  manner  of  the  grand- 
son of  Africa  who  hovered  about  the  room  to  which  he  had  conducted 
us,  flecking  away  a  speck  of  dust  here,  raising  a  curtain  and  lowering 
it  again  to  the  self-same  height  over  yonder.  I  had  no  desire  to  spend 
even  a  short  span  of  my  existence  in  a  Southern  dungeon,  along  with 
this  dusky  bearer  of  the  white  man's  burdens.  But  he  would  have 
made  a  most  unsuitable  spectator  to  the  imperative  task  of  removing 
the  Georgian  grime  of  travel.  Enticing  him  into  a  corner  out  of  sight 
of  the  key-hole  I  called  his  attention  to  the  brilliancy  of  a  silver  coin. 
Instead  of  springing  to  a  window  to  shout  for  the  police,  he  snatched 
the  curiosity  in  a  strangely  orthodox  manner,  flashed  upon  us  a  row 
of  dazzlingly  white  teeth,  and  wished  us  a  pleasant  evening.  Possibly 
I  had  read  the  anti-tipping  ordinance  too  hastily;  it  may  merely  have 
forbidden  the  public  bestowal  of  gratuities. 

A  microscopic  examination  might  possibly  have  proved  that  the 
reckoning  which  was  laid  before  us  at  the  end  of  dinner  showed 
some  signs  of  shrinkage ;  to  the  naked  eye  it  was  quite  as  robust  as 
its  twin  brothers  to  the  North.  But  of  course  the  impossibility  of 
leaving  a  goodly  proportion  of  the  change  to  be  cleared  away  with 
the  crumbs  would  account  for  Savannah's  low  cost  of  living.  The 


8  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

lengthening  of  the  ebony  face  at  my  elbow  as  I  scraped  the  remnants 
of  my  bank-note  together  might  have  been  due  to  the  exertions  of  the 
patent-leather  shoes  that  sustained  it  to  contain  more  than  their  fair 
share  of  contents.  But  it  seemed  best  to  make  sure  of  the  source  of 
dismay ;  we  might  have  to  eat  again  before  we  left  Savannah. 

"  I  understand  you  can't  accept  tips  down  here  in  Georgia  ? "  I 
hazarded,  reversing  the  usual  process  between  money  and  pocket.  The 
increasing  elongation  of  the  waiter's  expression  branded  the  notion  a 
calumny  even  sooner  than  did  his  anxious  reply : 

"Ah  been  taking  'em  right  along,  sah.  Yes,  sah,  thank  you,  sah. 
Dey  did  try  to  stop  us  makin'  a  livin',  sah,  but  none  of  de  gen'lemans 
do'n  ferget  us." 

I  can  highly  commend  the  anti-tipping  law  of  Georgia ;  it  gives  one 
a  doubled  sense  of  adventure,  of  American  freedom  from  restraint, 
reminiscent  of  the  super-sweetness  of  stolen  apples  in  our  boyhood  days. 

We  liked  Savannah ;  preferred  it,  perhaps,  to  any  of  the  cities  of  our 
journey  southward.  We  liked  the  Southern  hospitality  of  its  churches, 
consistent  with  their  roominess  and  their  wide-open  windows.  We 
were  particularly  taken  with  the  custom  of  furnishing  fans  as  well  as 
hymn-books,  though  we  may  have  wondered  a  bit  whether  the  segrega- 
tion of  the  colored  people  persisted  clear  beyond  St.  Peter's  gate. 
We  were  especially  grateful  to  the  genius  of  Oglethorpe,  who  had  made 
this  a  city  of  un-American  spaciousness,  with  every  other  cross  street 
an  ample  boulevard,  which  gave  the  lungs  and  the  eyes  a  sense  of 
having  escaped  to  the  open  country.  Perhaps  it  was  these  wooded 
avenues,  more  than  anything  else,  that  made  us  feel  we  were  at  last 
approaching  the  tropics,  where  life  itself  is  of  more  real  importance  than 
mere  labor  and  business.  Had  we  settled  there,  we  should  quickly 
have  attuned  ourselves  to  the  domesticity  of  her  business  customs, — 
breakfast  at  nine,  dinner  from  two  to  four,  giving  the  mind  harrassed 
with  the  selling  of  cotton  or  the  plaints  of  clients  time  to  compose 
itself  in  household  quiet,  supper  when  the  evening  breezes  have  wiped 
out  the  memory  of  the  scorching  sun.  We  liked  the  atmosphere  of 
genuine  companionship  between  the  two  sections  of  the  population, 
despite  the  line  that  was  sternly  drawn  between  them  where  social 
intercourse  might  otherwise  have  blended  together.  The  stately  tread 
of  the  buxom  negro  women  bearing  their  burdens  on  heads  that  seemed 
designed  for  no  other  purpose  fitted  into  the  picture  our  imaginations 
persisted  in  painting  against  the  background  of  the  old  slave-market, 


OVERLAND  TO  THE  WEST  INDIES  9 

with  its  barred  cells,  in  defiance  of  the  assertion  of  inhabitants  that  not  a 
black  man  had  ever  been  offered  for  sale  there. 

The  man  who  conducted  us  to  the  top  of  Savannah's  "  sky-scrapah  " 
—  for  every  Southern  city  we  visited  boasted  one  such  link  between 
earth  and  heaven  —  was  still  frankly  of  the  "  rebel "  turn  of  mind  for 
all  his  youthfulness.  He  deplored  the  abolition  of  slavery.  In  the 
good  old  days  a  "  niggah  "  was  as  valuable  as  a  mule  to-day ;  no  owner, 
unless  he  was  a  fool,  would  have  thought  of  abusing  so  costly  a  posses- 
sion any  more  than  he  would  now  his  automobile.  The  golden  age  of 
the  negro  was  that  in  which  he  was  inspected  daily,  as  soldiers  are, 
and  sternly  held  to  a  certain  standard  of  outward  appearance  and 
health.  To-day  not  one  out  of  ten  of  them  was  fit  to  come  near  a 
white  man.  Laziness  had  ruined  them;  their  native  indolence  and  the 
familiarity  toward  them  of  white  men  from  the  North  had  been  their 
downfall.  The  South  had  no  fear  of  race  riots,  however ;  those  were 
things  only  of  the  North,  thanks  to  the  Northerner's  false  notion  of 
the  "  nigger's  "  human  possibilities.  Why  had  the  black  laborers  who 
had  raised  this  pride  of  Savannah  to  its  lofty  fifteen  stories  of  height 
always  lifted  their  hats  to  him,  their  foreman,  and  addressed  the  North- 
ern architects  with  the  disrespect  of  covered  heads?  Wise  men  from 
'*  up  east "  soon  learned  the  error  of  their  ways  in  the  treatment  of  the 
"  niggah,"  after  a  few  weeks  or  months  of  Southern  residence.  Slav- 
ery, in  principle,  was  perhaps  wrong,  but  it  was  the  only  proper  system 
with  negroes.  Besides,  we  should  not  forget  that  it  was  not  the  South 
that  had  introduced  slavery  into  the  United  States,  but  New  England ! 

Many  things,  I  knew,  were  chargeable  to  our  northeastern  states, 
but  this  particular  accusation  was  new  to  me.  Yet  this  son  of  the 
old  South  was  a  modern  American  in  other  respects,  for  all  his  out-worn 
point  of  view.  His  civic  pride,  bubbling  over  in  a  boasting  that  was 
not  without  a  suggestion  of  crudity,  alone  proved  that.  Savannah  was 
destined  to  become  sooner  or  later  the  metropolis  of  America;  it  was 
already  second  only  to  New  York  in  the  tonnage  of  its  shipping.  I 
cannot  recall  offhand  any  American  town  that  is  not  destined  some  day, 
in  the  opinion  of  its  proudest  citizens,  to  become  the  leader  of  our 
commercial  life,  nor  one  which  is  not  already  the  greatest  something  or 
other  of  the  entire  country.  No  doubt  this  conviction  everywhere 
makes  for  genuine  progress,  even  though  the  goal  of  the  imagination 
is  but  a  will-o'-the-wisp.  What  breeds  regret  in  my  soul,  however,  is 
the  paucity  of  our  cities  that  aspire  to  the  place  of  intellectual  leader- 


io  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

ship,  as  contrasted  with  the  multitude  of  those  which  picture  themselves 
the  foremost  in  trade  and  commerce. 

Possibly  Savannah  will  some  day  outstrip  New  York,  but  I  hope  not, 
for  it  has  something  to-day  the  loss  of  which  would  be  an  unfortunate 
exchange  for  mere  metropolitan  uproar  and  which  even  its  own 
leisurely  ambitious  people  might  regret  when  it  was  too  late.  This 
view  from  its  highest  roof,  with  its  chocolate-red  river  winding  away 
to  the  sea  sixteen  miles  distant,  and  inland  to  swampy  rice-fields  and  the 
abodes  of  alligators,  that  can  be  reached  only  by  "  bateau,"  with  its 
palm-flecked  open  spaces  and  its  freedom  from  smoke,  raised  the  hope 
that  it  might  aspire  to  remain  what  it  is  now  incontestably,  a  "  city  of 
trees  "  and  a  pleasant  dwelling-place. 

There  were  suggestions  in  the  over-languid  manner  of  some  of  its 
poorer  inhabitants  that  the  hookworm  was  prevalent  in  Savannah. 
Well-informed  citizens  pooh-poohed  the  notion,  asserting  that  "  hook- 
worm is  just  a  polite  Northern  word  for  laziness."  The  particular 
sore  spot  of  the  moment  was  the  scarcity  of  sugar.  From  Columbia 
onward  it  had  been  served  us  in  tiny  envelopes,  as  in  war-days.  That 
displayed  in  store  windows  was  a  mere  bait,  for  sale  only  with  a  corre- 
sponding quantity  of  groceries.  All  of  which  was  especially  surprising 
in  a  region  with  its  own  broad  green  patches  of  cane.  The  unsweetened 
inhabitants  explained  the  enigma  by  a  reference  to  "  profiteers,"  and 
pointed  out  the  glaringly  new  mansions  of  several  of  this  inevitable 
war-time  gentry.  Others  asserted  that  the  ships  at  the  wharves  across 
the  river  were  at  that  very  moment  loading  hundreds  of  tons  of  sugar 
for  Europe  and  furnishing  even  Germany  with  an  article  badly  needed 
at  home.  An  old  darky  added  another  detail  that  was  not  without  its 
significance : 

"  Dey  's  plenty  of  sorghum  an'  merlasses  right  now,  sah,  but  de  white 
folks  dey  cain't  eat  nothin'  but  de  pure  white." 

Men  of  a  more  thoughtful  class  than  our  guide  of  the  "  sky-scrapah  " 
had  a  somewhat  different  view  of  the  glories  of  the  old  South. 

"  Slavery,"  said  one  of  them,  "  was  our  curse  and  in  time  would 
have  been  our  ruination.  Not  so  much  because  it  was  bad  for  the 
negroes,  for  it  wasn't,  particularly.  But  it  was  ruining  the  white 
man.  It  made  him  a  haughty,  irresponsible  loafer,  incapable  of  con- 
trolling his  temper  or  his  passions,  or  of  soiling  his  hands  with  labor. 
We  have  real  cause  to  be  grateful  that  slavery  was  abolished.  But  that 
does  not  alter  the  fact  that  right  was  on  our  side  in  the  war  with 


OVERLAND  TO  THE  WEST  INDIES  n 

the  North  —  the  right  of  each  State  to  dissolve  its  union  with  the 
others  if  it  chose,  which  was  the  real  question  at  issue,  rather  than  the 
question  of  holding  slaves,  though  I  grant  that  we  are  better  off  by 
sticking  to  the  union.  If  the  South  had  won,  the  United  States  would 
be  to-day  a  quarrelsome  collection  of  a  score  of  independent  countries, 
unprogressive  as  the  Balkans." 

On  a  certain  burning  question  even  the  most  open-minded  sons  of  the 
South  were  of  the  prevailing  opinion. 

'*  Whatever  the  North  may  think,"  said  one  of  this  class,  "  we  are 
forced  to  hold  the  fear  of  lynching  constantly  over  the  negro.  In  the 
North  you  are  having  far  more  trouble  with  them  than  we.  And  why  ? 
Because  you  depend  on  the  authorities  to  curb  them.  Down  here  a 
serious  crime  by  a  negro  is  the  general,  immediate  business  of  every 
man  with  a  white  skin.  We  cannot  have  our  wives  or  daughters 
appearing  on  the  public  witness-stand  to  testify  against  an  attacking 
negro.  The  surest,  fairest,  most  effective,  and  least  expensive  means 
of  dealing  with  a  black  scoundrel  is  to  hang  him  at  once  from  the 
nearest  limb  and  go  home  and  forget  it.  It  seems  to  be  the  prevailing 
notion  in  the  North  that  we  are  more  apt  than  not  to  get  the  wrong 
man.  That  does  not  happen  in  one  case  out  of  a  hundred.  Our 
police  and  our  deputy  sheriffs  know  the  whole  history,  the  habits, 
character,  and  hiding-place  of  every  nigger  in  their  districts.  When 
one  of  the  bad  ones  commits  a  serious  crime,  they  know  exactly  where 
to  look  for  him,  and  the  citizens  who  go  with  them  take  a  rope  along. 
Without  lynching  we  would  live  in  mortal  terror  day  and  night.  As  it 
is,  we  have  far  less  trouble  with  the  negroes  than  you  do  in  the  North, 
and  the  vast  majority  of  them  get  along  better  with  us  than  they  do 
with  you." 

Good  friends  squandered  a  considerable  amount  of  time  and  gasolene 
to  show  us  the  region  round  about  Savannah.  Despite  their  warning 
that  this  floor-flat  coast  land  was  not  the  real  Georgia,  we  found  the 
mile  after  mile  of  cream-white  roads,  built  of  the  oyster-shells  that 
hang  like  the  bluffs  of  mountain  spurs  above  its  coastal  waters,  teem- 
ing with  interest  to  Northern  eyes.  The  endless  festoons  of  Spanish 
moss  alone  gave  us  the  sense  of  having  found  a  new  corner  of  the 
world.  Sturdy  live-oaks  were  untroubled  by  these  draperies  of  vege- 
tation, though  other  trees  seemed  gradually  to  waste  away  beneath 
them.  The  dead-brown  fields  of  corn  had  passed  the  stage  where  they 
would  have  been  cut  and  shocked  in  the  North,  and  the  ears  hung 
limply,  awaiting  the  hand  of  the  picker.  Corn-stalks  do  not  tempt 


12  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

animals  that  can  graze  all  through  the  winter.  The  "  crackers  "  whose 
ramshackle  abodes  broke  the  semi-wilderness  carried  the  memory  back 
to  the  peasants  of  Venezuela  or  of  the  Brazilian  hinterland;  their 
speech  and  their  mode  of  life  were  but  a  degree  less  primitive,  curious 
anachronisms  in  the  bustling,  ahead-of-date  America  of  to-day.  Here 
and  there  we  passed  what  had  once  been  a  great  plantation  of  the 
South,  productive  now  chiefly  of  aggressive  weeds.  One  such  busy 
estate  of  slavery  days  had  been  revamped  and  partly  restored  to  its 
pre-war  condition.  By  a  new  generation  of  Southern  planters?  No, 
indeed!  It  is  to-day  the  rendezvous  of  slangy,  dollar-worshipping 
youths  from  the  North,  who  bring  with  them  clicking  cameras  and 
pampered  movie  stars.  Thus  is  the  aggressive  modern  world  con- 
stantly treading  on  the  heels  of  the  leisurely  past. 

Through  the  first  hint  of  the  brief  southern  twilight  there  came 
marching  toward  us  under  the  festooned  trees  a  long  double-column 
of  negroes,  dressed  in  dingy  cotton  garments,  with  broad  black-and- 
white  stripes,  clanging  chains  pending  from  their  waists  to  their  legs, 
shovels  over  their  broad  shoulders,  and  flanked  by  several  weather- 
browned  white  men  in  faded  khaki,  carrying  rifles.  To  our  unaccus- 
tomed eyes  they  seemed  a  detail  of  some  medieval  stage-setting,  long 
since  abolished  from  the  scenes  of  real  life,  at  least  in  our  western 
world.  Our  hosts,  however,  accepted  the  group  as  a  consistent  bit  of 
the  landscape,  scarcely  noticeable  until  our  interest  called  their  attention 
to  it. 

"  One  of  our  far-famed  Georgia  chain-gangs,"  laughed  the  man  at 
the  wheel,  "  which  so  frequently  arouse  the  wet-eyed  pity  of  your 
Northern  philanthropists.  A  little  experience  with  the  '  poor  victims  ' 
usually  shows  them  that  the  system  is  not  so  satanic  as  it  looks  from 
the  strained  perspective  of  the  North.  You  can  take  my  word  for  it 
that  at  least  half  those  niggers  steal  something  else  as  soon  as  possible, 
once  they  are  freed,  so  they  can  come  back  again  to  this  comfortable  life 
of  irresponsibility  and  three  square  meals  a  day." 

The  scarcity  of  towns  farther  south  was  less  surprising  within 
sight  of  the  soil  they  must  feed  on  than  in  the  geographies  of  our 
school-days.  The  region  reminded  me  of  tropical  Bolivia,  with  its 
thinly  wooded  pampas  alternating  with  swamps,  its  reddish,  undomesti- 
cated-looking  cattle  grazing  through  a  wilderness  scattered  with  palm- 
trees.  Gaunt  razor-backed  hogs  foraged  savagely  for  nourishment 
among  the  forest  roots  about  each  "  cracker's  "  weather-painted  her- 


OVERLAND  TO  THE  WEST  INDIES  13 

mitage.  Other  signs  of  animal  life  were  rare,  except  the  first  buzzards 
of  the  tropics  we  were  approaching,  lazily  circling  over  the  tree-tops. 
The  single  grass-grown  track  sped  constantly  away  behind  us,  as  if 
even  this  way-station  local  saw  few  reasons  to  halt  in  so  uncultivated  a 
landscape.  One  of  those  narrow  reddish  rivers  that  seem  to  form 
the  boundaries  between  all  our  southern  states  rumbled  past  beneath 
us,  and  the  endless  brown,  swampy  flat-lands  of  Florida,  punctuated 
here  and  there  with  clusters  of  small  wooden  houses,  inconspicuous 
in  their  drab  setting  as  animals  of  protective  coloring,  rolled  incessantly 
away  into  the  north. 

Jacksonville,  the  "  gateway  to  Florida,"  is  not  so  Southern  in  aspect 
as  Savannah.  The  considerable  percentage  of  Northerners  among  its 
inhabitants  and  its  bustling  pursuit  of  material  fortune  give  it  a  "  busi- 
ness-first "  atmosphere  we  had  not  encountered  since  leaving  Richmond. 
Negroes,  too,  were  scarcer  in  proportion  to  white  men,  and  destined 
to  become  more  so  as  we  proceeded,  a  phenomenon  equally  noticeable 
in  Brazil  as  the  traveler  approaches  the  equator.  The  reason,  of  course, 
is  plain,  and  similar  in  the  two  countries.  In  slavery  days  neither  our 
most  southern  state  nor  the  region  of  the  Amazon  were  far  enough 
developed  to  draw  many  ship-loads  of  Africans,  and  their  more  recent 
exploitation  has  brought  an  influx  of  fortune-seekers,  chiefly  white  in 
color.  The  creamy  shell  roads  about  "  Jax,"  as  the  tendency  to  short 
cuts  and  brevity  has  dubbed  Florida's  most  northern  city,  race 
smoothly  away  in  all  directions  through  endless  vistas  of  straight  yellow 
pines,  interspersed  with  patches  of  lilac-hued  water  hyacinths,  and 
strewn  with  spider-like  undergrowth  that  quenches  its  thirst  from  the 
humid  air.  To  the  casual  glance,  at  least,  the  sandy  soil  does  not  hold 
great  promise,  but  it  is  highly  productive,  for  all  that  As  proof  thereof 
it  is  sufficient  to  mention  that  the  saw-mills  that  furnished  lath  at  a 
dollar  a  thousand  a  few  years  ago  command  eight  times  that  in  these 
days  of  universally  bloated  prices. 

Trainmen  in  light  khaki  garb  pick  up  the  south-bound  express  for 
its  long  run  of  more  than  five  hundred  miles  through  the  peninsular 
state.  A  brick  highway,  inviting  to  motorists,  parallels  the  railroad 
for  a  considerable  distance,  and  surrenders  its  task  to  an  efficient,  if 
blacker,  route  farther  on.  There  are  other  evidences  than  this  that 
Florida  is  more  conscious  of  her  appeal  to  Northern  excursionists  than 
are  several  of  her  neighbors  along  the  Atlantic  seaboard. 

St.  Augustine  is  perhaps  more  attractive,  in  her  own  way,  than  even 
Savannah,  at  least  to  the  mere  seeker  after  residential  delights.  But 


14  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

she  is  scarcely  a  part  of  the  American  South,  as  we  of  the  North  picture 
it.  The  nasal  twang  of  our  middle  West,  or  the  slurred  "  r  "  of  New 
England  are  far  more  often  heard  on  her  streets  and  verandas  than 
the  leisurely  drawl  of  what  was  once  the  Confederacy.  Tasks  that 
would  fall  only  to  the  lot  of  the  black  man  in  Georgia  or  the  Carolinas 
are  here  not  beneath  the  dignity  of  muscular  Caucasian  youths.  Above 
all  she  has  a  Spanish  tinge  that  marks  her  -as  the  first  connecting-link 
with  the  vast  Iberian  civilization  beyond.  The  massive  fortress  front- 
ing the  sea,  the  main  square  that  still  clings  to  its  ancient  name  of 
"  Plaza  de  la  Constitution,"  carry  the  thoughts  as  quickly  back  to  the 
days  of  buccaneers  and  the  dark  shadows  of  the  Inquisition  as  those 
where  the  Castilian  tongue  holds  supreme  sway.  Here  the  very  stones 
of  protective  walls  and  narrow  back  streets  are  impregnated  with 
rousing  tales  of  conscienceless  governors  from  old  Spain  and  revolts 
of  the  despised  criollos  against  the  exactions  of  the  ruling  "  Goths." 

But  St.  Augustine  is,  of  course,  genuinely  American  at  heart  for 
all  its  origin,  and  even  its  scattering  of  negroes  are  proudly  aware  of 
their  nationality. 

"  Look  like  dat  some  ovehseas  equipment  you  got  dah,  sah,"  said 
the  grinning,  ink-complexioned  youth  who  carried  my  musette  to  a 
chamber  filled  with  inviting  sea  breezes. 

"  Yes,  indeed,  George.     Why,  were  you  over  there  ?  " 

"  Ya-as,  sah.  Ah  sure  help  run  dem  or'nry  Germans  home.  Dey 
hyeard  a-plenty  from  d'  shells  we  sent  on  f o'  dem  —  from  Bohdeoh." 

The  memory  of  the  war  he  had  waged  in  Bordeaux  caused  a  broad 
streak  of  ivory  to  break  out  across  his  ebony  face  as  often  as  he  caught 
sight  of  us  until  the  "  ovehseas  equipment "  had  again  disappeared  in 
the  direction  of  the  station. 

Occupation,  to  St.  Augustine,  seems  to  be  synonymous  with  the  un- 
remitting pursuit  of  tourists.  Her  railway  gates  are  the  vortex  of  a 
seething  whirlpool  of  hotel-runners  and  the  clamoring  jehus  of  horse 
and  gasolene  conveyances.  An  undisturbed  stroll  through  her  streets 
is  out  of  the  question,  for  every  few  yards  the  pedestrian  is  sure  to 
hear  the  gentle  rumble  of  wheels  behind  him  and  a  sugary,  "  Carriage, 
sah?  All  de  sights  in  town  fo'  two  dollars,  sah,  or  a  nice  ride  out 

to "  and  so  on  for  several  minutes,  until  the  wheedling  voice  has 

run  through  the  gamut  of  sanguinity,  persuasiveness,  and  shriveled 
hope,  and  died  away  in  husky  disappointment,  only  to  be  replaced  a 
moment  later  by  another  driver's  honeyed  tones. 

Ponce  de  Leon,  seeking  the  fountain  of  youth,  failed  to  recognize 


OVERLAND  TO  THE  WEST  INDIES  15 

in  St.  Augustine  the  object  of  his  quest.  Could  he  return  to-day,  he 
would  find  that  at  least  the  immortality  of  fame  has  been  vouchsafed 
him,  for  his  name  flourishes  everywhere,  on  hotel  fagades,  shop  fronts, 
and  cigar-boxes.  Perhaps,  too,  he  was  near  the  goal  of  physical  per- 
manence without  suspecting  it.  At  least,  if  assertion  be  accepted  as 
proof,  St.  Augustine  is  without  a  peer  in  longevity.  "  The  oldest "  is 
the  title  of  nobility  most  widely  prevalent  in  all  the  region.  The  oldest 
town,  with  the  oldest  house,  flanked  by  the  dwelling  of  the  oldest 
woman,  who  attends  the  oldest  church,  linked  to  her  residence  by  the 
oldest  street,  and  visible  to  possessors  of  the  oldest  inducement  to 
human  endeavor,  leaves  the  gaping  traveler  no  choice  but  to  accept  the 
assertion  of  its  inhabitants  that  here  is  to  be  found  the  oldest  everything 
under  the  sun,  or  at  least  in  the  United  States,  which  is  the  same 
thing,  for  surely  no  one  would  be  so  unpatriotic  as  to  admit  that  other 
lands  or  planets  could  outdo  us  in  anything  we  set  out  to  accomplish. 
Even  "  old  Ponce,"  dean  of  the  six  thousand  saurians  —  count  them 
if  you  dare  to  doubt  —  that  sleep  through  the  centuries  out  at  St. 
Augustine's  "  Alligator  Farm "  confesses,  through  the  mouth  of  his 
keeper  from  upstart  Italy,  to  five  hundred  unbroken  summers,  and 
placidly  accepts  the  honor  of  being  "  the  oldest  animal  in  captivity." 
One  stands  enraged  at  the  thought  that  if  "  Ponce "  cared  to  open 
his  capacious  mouth  and  speak,  he  might  tell  an  eager*  world  just  what 
Hernando  de  Soto  wore  when  his  boat  glided  over  his  everglade  home, 
or  what  were  the  exact  words  with  which  his  human  namesake  acknowl- 
edged his  inability  to  prolong  his  butterfly  existence  by  finding  the 
waters  of  immortality.  Small  wonder,  indeed,  that  he  dares  raise  his 
scaly  head  and  yawn  in  the  face  even  of  insurance  agents. 

The  trolley  that  carries  "  Ponce's "  visitors  across  the  wastes  of 
brackish  water  and  worthless  land  separating  St.  Augustine  from  the 
open  sea  is  virtually  a  private  car  to  the  rare  tourist  of  October  days. 
This  comatose  period  of  the  year  gives  the  bather  the  sense  of  having 
leased  the  whole  expanse  of  the  Atlantic  as  his  own  bath-tub.  For 
the  native  Floridans,  however  widely  they  may  extoll  their  endless 
stretch  of  coast-line,  seem  to  make  small  use  of  it  themselves. 

For  hundreds  of  miles  southward  the  eyes  of  the  traveler  weary 
at  the  swamp  and  jungle  sameness  of  the  peninsular  state.  The  Gulf 
Stream  and  the  diligent  coral  have  built  extensively,  but  they  have  left 
the  job  unfinished,  in  the  indifferent  tropical  way.  Grape-fruit  farms 
and  orange-groves  break  forth  upon  the  primeval  wilderness  here  and 


16  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

there,  yet  only  often  enough  to  emphasize  its  unpeopled  immensity. 
Even  Palm  Beach  has  nothing  unusual  to  show  until  the  holidays  of  mid- 
winter bring  its  vast  hostelries  back  to  life.  One  loses  little  in  fleeing 
all  day  onward  at  Southern  express  speed. 

Miami,  however,  is  worth  a  halt,  if  only  for  a  glimpse  of  the  United 
States  in  full  tropical  setting.  There  the  refugee  from  winter  will 
find  cocoanuts  nodding  everywhere  above  him;  there  he  may  pick 
his  morning  grape-fruit  at  the  door;  and  he  need  be  no  plutocrat  to 
have  his  table  graced  with  those  aristocratic  fruits  of  the  tropics,  the 
papaya  and  the  alligator-pear.  He  cannot  but  be  amused,  too,  at  the 
casual  Southern  manners  of  the  -street-cars,  the  motorman-conductors 
of  which  make  change  with  one  hand  and  govern  their  brakes  with 
the  other,  or  who  retire  to  a  seat  within  the  car  for  a  chat  with  a 
passenger  or  the  retying  of  a  shoelace,  while  the  conveyance  careens 
madly  along  the  outskirt  streets. 

Thanks,  perhaps,  to  its  sea  breezes,  Miami  seemed  no  hotter  than 
Richmond,  though  it  was  a  humid,  tropical  heat  that  forced  its  in- 
habitants to  compromise  with  Dame  Fashion.  As  far  north  as  Savan- 
nah a  few  eccentric  beings  ignored  her  dictates  to  the  extent  of  fronting 
the  July  weather  of  October  in  white  suits  and  straw  hats,  but  they 
had  a  self-conscious,  hunted  manner  which  proved  they  were  aware  of 
their  conspicuousness.  In  southern  Florida,  however,  it  was  rather 
those  who  persisted  in  dressing  by  the  calendar  who  attracted  attention, 
and  there  were  men  of  all  occupations  who  dared  to  appear  in  public 
frankly  devoid  of  the  superfluous  upper  garment  of  male  attire. 

Some  thirty  miles  south  of  Miami  the  "  Dixie  Highway,"  capable  and 
well-kept  to  the  last,  disappears  for  lack  of  ground  to  stand  on.  The 
soldierly  yellow  pines  give  way  to  scrub  jungle,  and  swamps  gain  the 
ascendency  over  solid  earth.  Amphibious  plants  cover  the  landscape 
like  armies  of  ungainly  crabs  or  huge  spiders.  Compact  masses  of 
dwarf  trees  and  bristling  bushes  cluster  as  tightly  together  as  Italian 
hill-top  villages,  as  if  for  mutual  protection  from  the  ever-increasing 
expanses  of  water.  Wherever  land  wins  the  constant  struggle  against 
the  other  element,  the  gray  "  crabs  "of  vegetation  stretch  away  in 
endless  vistas  on  each  hand.  White  herons  rise  from  the  everglades 
at  the  rumble  of  the  train,  and  wing  their  leisurely  way  into  the  flat 
horizon.  A  constant  sea  breeze  sweeps  through  the  coaches.  At  rare 
intervals  a  little  wooden  shack  or  two,  sometimes  shaded  by  half  a 
dozen  magnificent  royal  palms,  keeps  a  precarious  foothold  on  the 


OVERLAND  TO  THE  WEST  INDIES  17 

shrinking  soil ;  but  it  is  hard  to  imagine  what  means  of  livelihood  man 
finds  in  these  swampy  wastes. 

The  mainland  ends  at  Jewfish,  a  cluster  of  three  or  four  yellow 
wooden  cabins,  and  for  more  than  a  hundred  miles  the  traveler  experi- 
ences the  uncouth  sensation  of  making  an  ocean  voyage  by  rail. 
Strangely  enough,  however,  there  is  .more  dry  land  for  a  considerable 
distance  after  the  continent  has  been  left  behind  than  during  the  last 
twenty  miles  of  mainland.  The  swamps  disappear,  and  the  gray  coral 
rock  of  the  chain  of  islands  along  which  the  train  speeds  steadily  on- 
ward sustains  a  more  generous  vegetation  than  that  of  the  watery  wastes 
behind.  Gradually,  however,  the  grayish  shallows  on  either  hand  turn 
to  the  ultramarine  blue  of  the  Caribbean,  and  the  score  of  island  step- 
ping-stones along  which  the  railroad  skips  grow  smaller  and  more 
widely  separated,  with  long  miles  of  sea-washed  trestles  between  them. 
Within  an  hour  these  have  become  so  narrow  that  they  are  invisible 
from  the  car  windows,  and  the  train  seems  to  be  racing  along  the 
surface  of  the  sea  itself,  out-distancing  ocean-liners  bound  in  the  same 
direction.  Brazil-like  villages  of  sun-browned  shacks  surrounded  by 
waving  cocoanut  palms  cluster  in  the  center  of  the  larger  keys,  as  the 
Anglo-Saxon  form  of  the  Spanish  cayo  designates  these  scattered  islets 
of  the  Caribbean.  The  names  of  the  almost  unpeopled  stations  grow 
more  and  more  Castilian  —  Key  Largo,  Islamorada,  Matacumbe,  Bahia 
Honda,  Boca  Chica.  In  places  the  water  underneath  is  shallow  enough 
for  wading,  and  shades  away  from  light  brown  through  several  tones 
of  pink  to  the  deepest  blue.  The  building  of  a  railroad  by  boat  must 
have  been  a  task  to  try  at  times  the  stoutest  hearts,  and  the  cost  thereof 
suggests  that  the  undertaking  was  rather  a  labor  of  love  than  a  hope 
of  adequate  financial  return. 

The  Cuban  tinge  of  the  passengers  had  steadily  increased  from 
Jacksonville  southward ;  now  the  "  White  "  car  showed  many  a  com- 
plexion that  was  suspiciously  like  those  in  the  coach  ahead.  As  with 
the  Mexican  passengers  of  our  southwest,  however,  the  "  Jim  Crow  " 
rules  are  not  too  rigorously  applied  to  travelers  from  the  lands  beyond. 
Indeed,  the  color-line  all  but  fades  away  during  the  long  run  through 
Florida,  partly,  perhaps,  because  of  the  increasing  scarcity  of  negroes. 
By  the  time  the  traveler  has  passed  Miami,  African  features  become 
almost  conspicuous  by  their  rarity. 

Toward  the  end  of  the  three-hour  railway  journey  by  sea,  land  grows 
so  scarce  that  platforms  are  built  out  upon  trestles  to  sustain  the  sta- 


18  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

tions.  The  wreckage  of  a  foundered  ship  lies  strewn  here  and  there 
along  the  edge  of  sandy  spits  across  which  we  rumble  from  sea  to  sea. 
The  pirates  of  olden  days  would  scarcely  believe  their  eyes  could  they 
awake  and  behold  this  modern  means  of  trespassing  on  their  retreats. 
Hundreds  of  palm-trees  uprooted  by  the  hurricane  of  the  month  before 
marked  the  last  stages  of  the  journey,  the  islands  became  larger  and 
more  closely  fitted  together,  and  as  the  sun  was  quenching  his  tropical 
thirst  in  the  incredibly  blue  sea  to  the  westward,  the  long  line  of  a  city 
appeared  in  the  offing  and  the  railroad  confessed  its  inability  to  com- 
pete longer  with  its  rivals  in  ocean  transportation. 

Key  West,  fifteen  hundred  miles  south  of  New  York,  is  a  quaint  mix- 
ture of  American  and  Latin-American  civilization,  with  about  equal 
parts  of  each.  Its  wooden  houses  of  two  or  three  stories,  with  wide 
verandas  supported  by  pillars,  lend  tropical  features  to  our  familiar 
architecture.  The  Spanish  tongue,  increasingly  prevalent  in  the  streets 
from  St.  Augustine  southward,  is  heard  here  as  often  as  English. 
The  frank  staring  that  characterizes  the  Americas  below  the  United 
States,  the  placid  indifference  to  convenience  typified  in  the  failure  of 
its  trolley-cars  to  come  anywhere  near  the  railroad  station,  the  tendency 
to  consider  loafing  before  a  fruit-store  or  a  hole-in-the-wall  grocery 
a  fitting  occupation  for  grown  men,  mark  it  as  deeply  imbued  with  the 
Spanish  influence.  Small  as  the  island  is,  the  town  swarms  with  auto- 
mobiles, and  the  chief  ambition  of  its  youths  seems  to  be  to  drowse 
all  day  in  the  front  seat  of  a  car  and  trust  to  luck  and  a  few  passengers 
at  train-  or  boat-time  to  give  them  a  livelihood.  Doctors  and  dentists 
announcing  "  special  lady  attendant "  show  that  the  Latin-American 
insistence  on  chaperonage  holds  full  sway.  The  names  of  candidates 
for  municipal  offices,  from  mayor  to  *'  sexton  of  the  cemetery,"  are 
nearly  all  Spanish.  As  in  the  towns  along  our  Mexican  border,  the 
official  tongue  is  bilingual,  and  Americans  from  the  North  are  frankly 
considered  foreigners  by  the  Cubanized  rank  and  file  of  voters. 
Freight-cars  marked  "No  sirve  para  azucar"  ("Do  not  use  for 
sugar")  fill  the  railroad  yards;  the  very  motor-men  greet  their  pas- 
sengers in  Spanish. 

The  resident  of  the  "  Island  City  "  does  not  look  forward  with  dread 
to  his  winter  coal-bill.  Not  a  house  in  town  boasts  a  chimney.  But 
this  advantage  is  offset  by  his  year-long  contest  with  mosquitos  and 
the  absence  of  fresh  water.  The  railroad  brings  long  trains  of  the 
latter  in  gigantic  casks;  the  majority  of  the  smaller  householders  de- 


OVERLAND  TO  THE  WEST  INDIES  19 

pend  upon  the  rains  and  their  eave-troughs.  As  in  all  tropical  America, 
the  scarcity  of  vegetables  restricts  the  local  diet.  Fish,  sponges,  and 
mammoth  turtles  are  the  chief  native  products,  with  the  exception,  of 
course,  of  an  industry  that  has  carried  the  name  of  Key  West  to  every 
village  of  our  land. 

Of  the  two  principal  cigar  factories  we  visited  one  was  managed 
by  a  Cuban  and  the  other  by  an  American.  The  employees  are  some 
seventy  per  cent,  natives  of  the  greatest  of  the  West  Indies,  and  Span- 
ish is  the  prevailing  tongue  in  the  workshops.  There,  as  in  the  city 
itself,  the  color-line  shows  no  evidence  of  existence.  Each  long 
table  presents  the  whole  gamut  of  gradations  in  human  complexions. 
Piece  work  is  the  all  but  invariable  rule,  and  the  notion  of  striking  for 
shorter  hours  would  find  no  adherents.  The  cigar-maker  begins  his 
daily  task  at  the  hour  he  chooses  and  leaves  when  he  has  wearied  of 
the  uninspiring  toil.  This  does  not  mean  that  the  tables  are  often 
unoccupied  during  the  daylight  hours,  for  the  citizen  of  Key  West,  like 
those  in  every  other  corner  of  this  maltreated  and  war-weary  world, 
finds  the  ratio  between  his  earnings,  whatever  his  diligence,  and  the  de- 
mands made  upon  them,  constantly  balancing  in  the  wrong  direction, 
despite  a  long  series  of  forced  wage  increases  within  the  last  few  years. 
Not  only  the  pianist-fingered  men  who  perform  the  most  obvious  opera- 
tion of  cigar-making,  that  of  rolling  the  weeds  together  in  their  final 
form,  but  those  who  separate  the  leaves  into  their  various  grades  and 
colors  by  spreading  them  around  the  cloth-bound  edge  of  a  half-barrel, 
the  women  who  deftly  strip  them  of  their  central  stem,  even  those 
who  box  and  label  the  finished  product,  all  have  the  fatness  of  their 
pay  envelope  depend  on  the  amount  they  accomplish. 

Cigar-making  came  to  Key  West  as  the  most  obvious  meeting-place 
of  material,  maker,  and  consumer  thirty-five  years  ago.  To-day  its 
factories  are  almost  too  numerous  for  counting.  The  largest  of  them 
are  broad,  low,  modern  structures  facing  the  sea  and  ventilated  by  its 
constant  breezes ;  the  smallest  are  single  shanty  rooms.  The  raw  ma- 
terial still  comes  chiefly  from  Cuba,  but  that  from  our  own  country, 
as  far  away  as  Connecticut,  has  its  place  in  even  the  best  establish- 
ments. Though  women  predominate  in  several  of  the  processes,  the 
actual  making  is  almost  entirely  in  the  hands  of  men  —  and  their 
tongues,  I  might  add,  for  they  do  not  hesitate  to  lend  the  assistance  of 
those  to  the  glue  with  which  the  consumer's  end  is  bound  together. 
The  average  workman  rolls  some  two  hundred  cigars  a  day.  Men, 
too,  sort  the  damp  and  bloated  cigars  into  their  respective  shades  of 


20  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

colors  and  arrange  them  in  boxes,  which  are  placed  under  a  press. 
From  these  they  are  removed  by  women  and  girls,  a  dozen  labels  hang- 
ing fan-wise  from  their  lower  lips,  and  each  cigar  is  banded  and  re- 
turned to  the  box  in  the  exact  order  in  which  they  were  taken  from  it. 
Stamped  with  the  government  revenue  label  precisely  as  one  affixes  the 
postage  to  a  letter,  the  boxes  are  placed  in  an  aging  and  drying  room 
—  theoretically  at  least,  though  the  present  insistency  of  demand  often 
sends  them  on  their  way  to  the  freight-cars  the  very  day  of  their  com- 
pletion. 

The  wrapper  is  of  course  the  most  delicate  and  costly  of  the  ma- 
terials used,  being  now  commonly  grown  under  cheese-cloth  even  in 
sun-drenched  Cuba.  The  by-products  from  the  maker's  bench  are 
shipped  northward  to  cigarette  factories.  Imperfect  cigars  are  culled 
out  before  the  boxing  process  and  consumed  locally,  being  given  out 
to  the  "  general  help  "  to  the  extent,  in  the  larger  factories,  of  five  or 
six  thousand  a  month.  The  workman,  however  —  and  here  we  find 
the  present  day  tyranny  of  labor  maintained  even  in  this  far-flung 
island  of  our  southern  coast  —  is  paid  for  every  cigar  he  makes, 
though  he  may  find  himself  invited  to  seek  employment  elsewhere  if 
his  average  of  "  culls  "  is  too  persistently  high.  It  is  said  that  the 
makers  of  candy  never  taste  the  stuff  they  supply  a  sweet-tooth  world ; 
the  same  may  almost  be  said  of  the  cigarreros  of  Key  West.  If  they 
smoke  at  all  in  the  tobacco-laden  atmosphere  of  the  factories,  they  are 
far  more  apt  to  be  addicted  to  the  cigarette  than  to  the  product  of  their 
own  handicraft.  The  smoker,  by  the  way,  who  visits  Key  West  is 
doomed  to  disappointment;  cigars  are  no  cheaper  there  than  in  the 
most  northwestern  corner  of  our  land.  Nor  should  he  bring  with 
him  the  hope  of  sampling  for  once  the  brands  beyond  his  means.  The 
factories  treat  their  swarms  of  visitors  with  every  courtesy  —  except 
that  of  tucking  a  cigar,  either  of  the  five-cent  or  the  dollar  variety, 
into  a  receptive  vest  pocket. 

The  cigar-makers  of  Key  West  have  one  drain  upon  their  income 
which  is  not  common  to  other  professions.  Each  one  contributes  a 
small  sum  weekly  to  the  support  of  a  "  reader."  A  superannuated 
member  of  the  craft  sits  on  a  platform  overlooking  the  long  roomful 
of  eagle-taloned  manipulators  of  the  weed  and  reads  aloud  to  them  as 
they  work.  The  custom  has  all  the  earmarks  of  being  a  direct 
descendant  of  the  doleful  dirge  with  which  negro  and  Indian  laborers, 
in  the  Old  as  well  as  the  New  World,  are  still  in  some  regions  urged 
on  to  greater  exertion.  But  the  reader's  calling  has  lost  its  romantic 


OVERLAND  TO  THE  WEST  INDIES  21 

tinge  of  earlier  days.  Those  we  heard  were  not  droning  the  poetry 
or  the  colorful  tales  of  the  Castilian  classics,  but  read  from  a  morning 
newspaper  printed  in  Spanish,  with  special  emphasis  on  the  success- 
ful struggles  of  the  "  working  class  "  against  "  capitalists  "  the  world 
over. 

The  hurricane  that  vented  its  chief  fury  on  the  Florida  keys  early 
in  September  was  still  the  chief  topic  of  conversation  in  Key  West. 
For  two  days  the  inhabitants  had  been  without  electricity,  gas,  or 
transportation ;  in  most  houses  even  the  bread  gave  out.  The  damage 
was  wide-spread,  sparing  neither  the  pipe-organs  of  churches  nor  the 
mattresses  of  family  bedrooms.  Many  a  house  was  reduced  to  a  mere 
heap  of  broken  boards.  Sea-walls  of  stone  were  strewn  in  scattered 
bits  of  rock  along  the  water-fronts ;  the  roofs  of  some  of  the  stanchest 
buildings  bore  gaping  holes  that  carried  the  memory  back  to  Flanders 
and  eastern  France. 

Two  other  routes  to  the  Caribbean  converge  on  this  one  through 
Key  West,  those  by  way  of  New  Orleans  and  Tampa.  The  ferry, 
for  it  is  little  more  than  that,  which  connects  the  southernmost  of 
our  cities  with  Havana  is  the  chief  drawback  of  the  overland  journey. 
In  the  first  place  its  rates  testify  to  its  freedom  from  competition, 
fifteen  dollars  and  tax  for  a  bare  ninety  miles  of  travel.  It  is  as  if 
our  ocean-liners  demanded  $500  for  the  journey  to  Liverpool,  with- 
out furnishing  food  or  baths  on  the  way.  Then,  as  though  the 
continued  exactions  of  passport  formalities  long  after  any  suitable 
reason  for  them  had  passed  were  not  sufficiently  troublesome  to  the 
harassed  passenger,  his  comfort  is  everywhere  second  to  that  of  the 
steamer  personnel,  while  the  outstretched  palm  invites  special  con- 
tribution for  even  the  most  shadowy  species  of  service.  But  once  the 
door  of  his  breathless  state-room  is  closed  behind  him,  a  brief  night's 
sleep,  if  the  inexplicable  uproar  with  which  the  crew  seems  to  pass  its 
time  during  the  journey  permits  it,  brings  him  to  the  metropolis  of 
the  West  Indies.  A  glimpse  through  the  port-hole  at  an  unseasonable 
hour  shows  the  horizon  dotted  at  regular  intervals  by  the  arc-lights  of 
Havana's  Malecon,  and  by  the  time  he  has  reached  the  deck,  these 
have  faded  away  in  the  swift  tropical  dawn,  and  the  steamer  is  nosing 
its  way  through  the  bottle-mouth  of  the  harbor  under  the  brow  of 
age-and-sea-browned  Morro  Castle.  There  ensues  the  inevitable  wait 
of  an  hour  or  two  until  the  haughty  port  doctor  rises  and  dresses  with 
meticulous  care  and  leisurely  sips  his  morning  coffee.  When  at  last 


22  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

he  appears,  his  professional  duty  does  not  delay  the  long  file  of  pas- 
sengers, for  the  simple  reason  that  his  attention  is  confined  to  the 
incessant  smoking  of  cigarettes  behind  his  morning  newspaper.  Pass- 
ports,  so  sternly  required  of  the  departing  American,  are  not  even 
worthy  of  a  glance  by  the  Cuban  officials;  the  custom  examination  is 
brief  and  unexacting.  Once  he  has  escaped  the  aggressive  maelstrom 
of  multicolored  humanity  which  welcomes  each  new-comer  with  hope- 
ful shrieks  of  delight,  the  traveler  quickly  merges  into  the  hetero- 
geneous multitude  that  is  as  characteristic  as  its  Spanish  style  oi 
architecture  of  the  cosmopolitan  capital  of  Cuba  libre. 


THE  AMERICAN  WEST  INDIES 


CHAPTER  II 

RANDOM    SKETCHES  OF   HAVANA 

A  CONSTANT  procession  of  Fords,  their  mufflers  wide  open, 
were  hiccoughing  out  the  Carlos  III  Boulevard  toward  the 
Havana  ball-park.  The  entrance-gate,  at  which  they 
brought  up  with  a  snort  and  a  sudden,  bronco-like  halt  that  all  but 
jerked  their  passengers  to  their  feet,  was  a  seething  hubbub.  Ticket- 
speculators,  renters  of  cushions,  venders  of  everything  that  can  be 
consumed  on  a  summer  afternoon,  were  bellowing  their  wares  into 
the  ears  of  the  fandticos  who  scrimmaged  about  the  ticket-window. 
Men  a  trifle  seedy  in  appearance  wandered  back  and  forth  holding 
up  half  a  dozen  tiny  envelopes,  arranged  in  fan-shape,  which  they  were 
evidently  trying  to  sell  or  rent.  The  pink  entradas  I  finally  succeeded 
in  snatching  were  not,  of  course,  the  only  tickets  needed.  That  would 
have  been  too  simple  a  system  for  Spanish-America.  They  carried 
us  as  far  as  the  grand  stand,  where  another  maelstrom  was  surging 
about  the  chicken-wire  wicket  behind  which  a  hen-minded  youth  was 
dispensing  permissions  to  sit  down.  He  would  have  been  more  suc- 
cessful in  the  undertaking  if  he  had  not  needed  to  thumb  over  a  hun- 
dred or  more  seat-coupons  reserved  for  special  friends  of  the  manage- 
ment or  of  himself  every  time  he  sought  to  serve  a  mere  spectator. 

We  certainly  could  not  complain,  however,  of  the  front-row  places 
we  obtained  except  that,  in  the  free-for-all  Spanish  fashion,  all  the 
riffraff  of  venders  crowded  the  foot-rests  that  were  supposedly  re- 
served for  front-row  occupants.  Nine  nimble  Cubans  were  scattered 
about  the  flat  expanse  of  Almendares  Park,  backed  by  Principe  Hill, 
with  its  crown  of  university  buildings.  Royal  palms  waved  their 
plumes  languidly  in  the  ocean  breeze;  a  huge  Cuban  flag  undulated 
beyond  the  outfielders;  a  score  of  vultures  circled  lazily  overhead, 
as  if  awaiting  a  chance  to  pounce  upon  the  "  dead  ones  "  which  the 
wrathful  "  fans  "  announced  every  time  a  player  failed  to  live  up  to 
their  hopes.  On  a  bench  in  the  shade  sat  all  but  one  of  the  invading 
team,  our  own  "  Pirates  "  from  the  Smoky  City.  The  missing  one 
was  swinging  his  club  alertly  at  the  home  plate,  his  eyes  glued  on  the 

25 


26  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

Cuban  zurdo,  or  "  south-paw,"  who  had  just  begun  his  contortions  in 
the  middle  of  the  diamond.  The  scene  itself  was  familiar  enough, 
yet  it  seemed  strangely  out  of  place  in  this  tropical  setting.  It  was 
like  coming  upon  a  picture  one  had  known  since  childhood,  to  find  it 
inclosed  in  a  brand  new  frame. 

I  reached  for  my  kodak,  then  restrained  the  impulse.  A  camera 
is  of  little  use  at  a  Cuban  ball  game.  Only  a  recording  phonograph 
could  catch  its  chief  novelties.  An  uproar  as  incessant  as  that  of  a 
rolling-mill  drowned  every  individual  sound.  It  was  not  merely  the 
venders  of  "El  escor  oficial"  of  sandwiches,  lottery-tickets,  cigars, 
cigarettes,  of  bottled  beer  by  the  basketful,  who  created  the  hubbub ; 
the  spectators  themselves  made  most  of  it.  The  long,  two-story  grand- 
stand behind  us  was  packed  with  Cubans  of  every  shade  from  ebony 
black  to  the  pasty  white  of  the  tropics,  and  every  man  of  them  seemed  to 
be  shouting  at  the  top  of  his  well-trained  lungs.  I  say  "  man  "  ad- 
visedly, for  with  the  exception  of  my  wife  there  were  just  three  women 
present,  and  they  had  the  hangdog  air  of  culprits.  Scores  of  them 
were  on  their  feet,  screaming  at  their  neighbors  and  waving  their  hands 
wildly  in  the  air.  An  uninformed  observer  would  have  supposed  that 
the  entire  throng  was  on  the  verge  of  a  free-for-all  fight,  instead  of 
enjoying  themselves  in  the  Cuban's  chief  pastime. 

"  Which  do  you  like  best,  baseball  or  bull-fights  ?  "  I  shouted  to  my 
neighbor  on  the  left.  He  was  every  inch  a  Cuban,  by  birth,  environ- 
ment, point  of  view,  in  his  very  gestures,  and  he  spoke  not  a  word  of 
English.  Generations  of  Spanish  ancestry  were  plainly  visible  through 
his  grayish  features ;  I  happened  to  know  that  he  had  applauded  many 
a  torero  in  the  days  before  the  rule  of  Spain  and  "  the  bulls  "  had  been 
banished  together.  Yet  he  answered  instantly: 

"  Baseball  by  far ;  and  so  do  all  Cubans." 

But  baseball,  strictly  speaking,  is  not  what  the  Cuban  enjoys  most. 
It  is  rather  the  gambling  that  goes  with  it.  Like  every  sport  of  the 
Spanish-speaking  race,  with  the  single  exception  of  bull-fighting,  base- 
ball to  the  great  majority  is  merely  a  pretext  for  betting.  The  throng 
behind  us  was  everywhere  waving  handsful  of  money,  real  American 
money,  for  Cuba  has  none  of  her  own  larger  than  the  silver  dollar. 
Small  wonder  the  bills  are  always  ragged  and  worn  and  half  obliter- 
ated, for  they  were  constantly  passing,  like  crumpled  waste-paper, 
from  one  sweaty  hand  to  another.  The  Platt  Amendment  showed 
incomplete  knowledge  of  Cuban  conditions  when  it  decreed  the  use 
of  American  money  on  the  island;  it  should  have  gone  further  and 


RANDOM  SKETCHES  OF  HAVANA  27 

ordered  the  bills  destined  for  Cuba  to  be  made  of  linoleum.  Bets 
passed  at  the  speed  of  sleight-of-hand  performances.  The  fandticos 
bet  on  every  swing  of  the  batter's  club,  on  every  ball  that  rose  into  the 
air,  on  whether  or  not  a  runner  would  reach  the  next  base,  on  how 
many  fouls  the  inning  would  produce.  Most  of  the  wagers  passed 
so  quickly  that  there  was  no  time  for  the  actual  exchange  of  money. 
A  flip  of  the  fingers  or  a  nod  of  the  head  sufficed  to  arrange  the  deal. 
There  were  no  dividing  lines  either  of  color  or  distance.  Full-fledged 
Africans  exchanged  wagers  with  men  of  pure  Spanish  blood.  Cabalis- 
tic signs  passed  between  the  grand-stand  and  the  sort  of  royal  box 
high  above.  Across  the  field  the  crowded  sol,  as  the  Cuban  calls  the 
unshaded  bleachers,  in  the  vocabulary  of  the  bull-ring,  was  engaged 
in  the  same  money- waving  turmoil.  The  curb  market  of  New  York 
is  slow,  noiseless,  and  phlegmatic  compared  with  a  ball-game  in  Havana. 

Close  in  front  of  us  other  venders  of  the  mysterious  little  envelopes 
wandered  back  and  forth,  seldom  attempting  to  make  themselves  heard 
above  the  constant  din.  Here  and  there  a  spectator  exchanged  a 
crumpled,  almost  illegible  dollar  bill  for  one  of  the  sealed  sobres.  My 
neighbor  on  the  left  bought  one  and  held  it  for  some  time  between  his 
ringed  fingers.  When  at  last  a  runner  reached  first  base  he  tore  the 
envelope  open.  It  contained  a  tiny  slip  of  paper  on  which  was  type- 
written "  ia  base;  la  carrera"  (ist  base;  ist  run).  The  purchaser 
swore  in  Spanish  with  artistic  fluency.  I  asked  the  reason  for  his 
wrath.  He  displayed  the  typewritten  slip  and  grumbled  "  mala 
suerte  " ;  then,  noting  my  puzzled  expression,  explained  his  "  bad  luck  " 
in  the  patient  voice  of  a  man  who  found  it  strange  that  an  American 
should  not  understand  his  own  national  game. 

"  This  envelope,  which  is  bought  and  sold  '  blind  ' —  that  is,  neither 
I  nor  the  man  who  sold  it  to  me  knew  what  was  in  it  —  is  a  bet  that  the 
first  run  will  be  made  by  a  first  baseman,  of  either  side.  But  the  man 
who  has  just  reached  first  base  is  the  rrri'  fiel',  and  the  first  baseman 
is  the  man  who  strtick  out  just  before  him.  If  he  had  made  the  first 
run  I  should  have  won  eight  dollars.  But  you  see  what  chance  he  has 
now  to  make  the  first  carrera.  Cursed  bad  luck !  " 

"  Rrri'  fiel',"  however,  "  died  "  in  a  vain  attempt  to  steal  third  base, 
and  his  partner  from  the  opposite  corner  of  the  garden  was  the  first 
man  to  cross  the  home-plate.  Instantly  a  cry  of  "  Lef '  fiel'  "  rose 
above  the  hubbub  and  the  erstwhile  venders  of  envelopes  began  paying 
the  winners.  A  lath-like  individual,  half  Chinaman,  half  negro,  whom 
the  fandticos  called  "  Chino,"  took  charge  of  the  section  about  us,  and 


28  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

handed  eight  greasy  bills  to  all  those  whom  luck  had  favored,  tucking 
the  winning  slips  of  paper  into  a  pocket  of  his  linen  coat.  But  these 
simple  little  wagers  were  only  for  "  pikers."  There  were  men  behind 
us  who,  though  they  looked  scarcely  capable  of  paying  for  their  next 
meal,  were  stripping  twenty  and  even  fifty  dollar  bills  off  the  rolls 
clutched  in  their  sweaty  hands  and  distributing  them  like  so  many 
handbills. 

The  game  itself  was  little  different  from  one  at  home.  The  Cuban 
players  varied  widely  in  color,  from  the  jet-black  third  baseman  to  a 
shortstop  of  rice-powder  complexion.  Their  playing  was  of  high  or- 
der, quite  as  "  fast "  as  the  average  teams  of  our  big  leagues.  Cubans 
hold  several  world  championships  in  sports  requiring  a  high  degree 
of  skill  and  swiftness.  The  umpire  in  his  protective  paraphernalia 
looked  quite  like  his  fellows  of  the  North,  yet  behind  his  mask  he  was 
a  rich  mahogany  brown.  His  official  speech  was  English,  but  when 
a  dispute  arose  he  changed  quickly  to  voluble  Spanish.  The  "  bu- 
caneros"  as  the  present-day  pirates  who  had  descended  upon  the 
Cuban  coast  were  best  known  locally,  won  the  game  on  this  occasion; 
but  the  day  before  they  had  not  scored  a  run. 

Baseball  —  commonly  pronounced  "  bahseh-bahl  "  throughout  the 
island  —  has  won  a  firm  foothold  in  Cuba.  Boys  of  all  colors  play  it 
on  every  vacant  lot  in  Havana ;  it  is  the  favorite  sport  of  the  youthful 
employees  of  every  sugar  estate  or  tobacco  vega  of  the  interior.  The 
sporting  page  is  as  fixed  a  feature  of  the  Havana  newspapers  as  of  our 
own  dailies.  Nor  do  the  Cuban  reporters  yield  to  their  fellows  of  the 
North  in  the  use  of  base-ball  slang.  Most  of  their  expressions  are 
direct  translations  of  our  own  vocabulary  of  the  diamond ;  some  of 
them  are  of  local  concoction.  Those  familiar  with  Spanish  can  find 
constant  amusement  in  Havana's  sporting  pages.  "  Fans  "  quite  un- 
familiar with  the  tongue  would  experience  no  great  difficulty  in  catch- 
ing the  drift  of  the  Cuban  reporter,  though  it  would  be  Greek  to  a 
Spaniard  speaking  no  baseball,  as  a  brief  example  will  demonstrate: 

EL  HABANA  DEJO  EN  BLANCO 

A  LOS  PIRATAS 
Jose   del   Carmen   Rodriguez    realize   varios    doubleplays   sensacionales 

BRILLANTE  PITCHING  DE  TUERO 

El  catcher  rojo,  Miguel  Angel  Gonzalez,  cerro  con  doble  Have  la  segunda  base 
a  los  corredores  americanos 

Primer  Inning 

Bucaneros  —  Bigbee  out  en  fly  al  center.    Terry,  rolling  al  short,  out  en  pri- 
tnera.     Carey  struck  out.     No  hit,  no  run. 


RANDOM  SKETCHES  OF  HAVANA        29 

Habana  —  Papo  out  en  fly  al  catcher.  Merito  muere  en  rolling  al  pitcher. 
Cueto  lo  imita. 

Segundo  Inning 

Bucaneros  —  Nickolson,  rolling  al  tercera,  es  out  al  pretender  robar  la  segunda. 
Cutshaw  batea  de  plancha  y  es  safe  en  primera.  Barber  out  en  rolling  a  la 
segunda,  adelantando  Cutshaw.  Carlson  out  en  fly  al  catcher.  No  hit,  no  run. 

Habana Juan  de  Angel  Aragon  out  en  linea  al  center.    Hungo  se  pasea. 

Calvo  hit  y  Hungo  va  a  segunda.  Torres  se  sacrifica.  Acosta,  con  las  bases 
llenas,  es  transferido  y  Hungo  anota.  Gonzalez  out  en  foul  al  pitcher.  Un  hit, 
una  carrera. 

Thus  the  Havanese  "  reporter  de  baseball "  rattles  on,  but  his  re- 
ports are  not  snatched  from  the  hands  of  newsboys  with  quite  the  same 
eagerness  as  in  the  North.  For  the  Cuban  fandtico  is  not  particularly 
interested  in  the  outcome  of  the  game  itself.  A  bet  on  that  would  be 
too  slowly  decided  for  his  quick  southern  temperament.  He  prefers 
to  set  a  wager  on  each  swing  of  the  pitcher's  arm,  and  with  the  last 
"  out "  of  the  ninth  inning  his  interest  ceases  as  abruptly  as  does  the 
unbroken  boiler-factory  uproar  that  rises  to  the  blue  tropical  heavens 
from  the  first  to  the  last  swing  of  the  batter's  club. 

The  visitor  whose  picture  of  Havana  is  still  that  of  the  drowsy 
tropical  city  of  our  school-books  is  due  for  a  shock.  He  will  be  most 
surprised,  perhaps,  to  find  the  place  as  swarming  with  automobiles 
as  an  open  honey-pot  with  flies.  A  local  paragrapher  asserts  that  "  a 
Havanese  would  rather  die  than  walk  four  blocks."  There  are  several 
perfectly  good  reasons  for  this  preference.  The  heat  of  Cuba  is  far 
less  oppressive  than  that  of  our  most  northern  states  in  mid-summer. 
Indeed,  it  is  seldom  unpleasant ;  but  the  slightest  physical  exertion 
quickly  bathes  the  body  in  perspiration,  and  nowhere  is  a  wilted  collar 
in  worse  form  than  in  Havana.  Moreover,  one  must  be  exceedingly 
nimble-footed  to  trust  to  the  prehistoric  means  of  transportation.  The 
custom  of  always  "riding  has  left  no  rights  to  the  pedestrian  in  the 
Cuban  capital.  The  chances  of  being  run  down  are  excellent,  and  the 
result  is  apt  to  be  not  merely  broken  ribs,  but  a  bill  for  damages  to  the 
machine.  Hence  the  expression  "  cojemos  un  For' "  is  synonymous 
with  going  a  journey,  however  short,  anywhere  within  the  city.  Your 
Havanese  friend  never  says,  "  Let 's  stroll  around  and  see  Perez,"  but 
always,  "  Let 's  catch  a  Ford,"  and  by  the  time  you  have  succeeded  in 
slamming  the  door  really  shut,  there  you  are  at  Perez's  saguan. 

Fords  scurry  by  thousands  through  the  streets  of  Havana  day  and 


30  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

night,  ever  ready  to  pick  up  a  passenger  or  two  and  set  them  down 
again  in  any  part  of  the  business  section  for  a  mere  twenty-cent  piece 
—  a  peseta  in  Cuban  parlance.  More  expensive  cars  are  now  and  then 
seen  for  hire;  by  dint  of  sleuth-like  observation  I  did  discover  one 
Ford  that  was  confined  to  the  labor  of  carrying  its  owner.  But  those 
are  the  exceptions  that  prove  the  rule,  and  the  rule  is  that  the  instant 
you  catch  sight  of  the  familiar  plebeian  features  of  a  "  flivver  "  you 
know,  even  without  waiting  to  see  the  hospitable  "  Se  Alquila  "  ("  Rents 
Itself  ")  on  the  wind-shield,  that  you  need  walk  no  farther,  whatever 
your  sex,  complexion,  or  previous  condition  of  pedestrianism.  They 
are  particularly  suited  to  the  narrow  streets  that  the  Spaniard,  in  his 
Arabic  avoidance  of  the  sun,  bequeathed  the  Cuban  capital.  There  is 
many  a  corner  in  the  business  section  which  larger  cars  can  turn  only 
by  backing  or  by  mounting  one  of  the  scanty  sidewalks.  The  closed 
taxi  of  the  North,  too,  would  be  as  much  out  of  place  in  Havana  as 
overcoats  at  a  Fourth  of  July  celebration.  A  few  of  the  horse  car- 
riages of  olden  days  still  offer  their  services;  but  as  neither  driver, 
carriage,  nor  steed  seems  to  have  been  groomed  or  fed  since  the  war  of 
independence,  even  those  in  no  haste  are  apt  to  think  twice  or  thrice, 
and  finally  put  their  trust  in  gasolene.  Hence  the  Ford  has  taken 
charge  of  Havana,  like  an  army  of  occupation. 

Unfortunately,  a  Ford  and  a  Cuban  chauffeur  make  a  bad  com- 
bination. The  native  temperament  is  quick-witted,  but  it  is  scantily 
gifted  with  patience.  In  the  hands  of  a  seeker  after  pesetas  a  "  flivver  " 
becomes  a  prancing,  dancing  steed,  a  snorting  charger  that  knows  no 
fear  and  yields  to  no  rival.  Apparently  some  Cuban  Burbank  has 
succeeded  in  crossing  the  laggard  of  our  northern  highways  with  the 
kangaroo.  *  The  whisper  of  your  destination  in  the  driver's  ear  is 
followed  by  a  leap  that  leaves  the  adjoining  fagades  a  mere  blur  upon 
the  retina.  A  traffic  jam  ahead  lends  the  snorting  beast  wings;  it 
has  a  playful  way  of  alighting  on  all  fours  in  the  very  heart  of  any 
turmoil.  If  a  pedestrian  or  a  rival  peseta-gatherer  is  crossing  the 
street  twenty  feet  beyond,  your  time  for  the  next  nineteen  feet  and 
eleven  inches  is  a  small  fraction  of  a  second  over  nothing.  Brake 
linings  seem  to  acquire  a  strangle  hold  from  the  Cuban  climate.  If 
the  opening  ahead  is  but  the  breadth  of  a  hand,  the  Havana  Ford  has 
some  secret  of  making  itself  still  more  slender.  I  have  never  yet  seen 
one  of  them  climb  a  palm-tree,  but  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that 
they  would  hesitate  to  undertake  that  simple  feat,  if  a  passenger's 
destination  were  among  the  fronds. 


RANDOM  SKETCHES  OF  HAVANA  31 

The  newspapers  run  a  daily  column  for  those  who  have  been 
"  Ford-ed  "  to  hospitals  or  cemeteries.  What  are  a  few  casualties  a 
day  in  a  city  of  nearly  half  a  million,  with  prolific  tendencies?  There 
are  voluminous  traffic  and  speed  rules,  but  he  would  be  a  friendless 
fellow  who  could  not  find  a  compadre  with  sufficient  political  power 
to  "  fix  it  up."  Death  corners  —  bill-boards  or  street-hugging  house- 
walls  from  behind  which  he  may  dart  without  warning  —  are  the  joy 
of  the  Cuban  chauffeur.  Courtesy  in  personal  intercourse  stands  on  a 
high  plane  in  Havana,  but  automobile  politeness  has  not  yet  reached 
the  stage  of  consideration  for  others.  Traffic  policemen,  soldierly 
fellows  widely  varied  in  complexion,  looking  like  bandsmen  in  their 
blue  denim  uniforms,  are  efficient,  and  accustomed  to  be  obeyed ;  but 
they  cannot  be  everywhere  at  once,  and  the  automobile  is.  They  con- 
fine their  efforts,  therefore,  to  a  few  seething  corners,  and  humanity 
trusts  to  its  own  lucky  star  in  the  no-man's-lands  between. 

The  private  machines  alone  would  give  Havana  a  busy  appearance. 
All  day  long  and  far  into  the  night  the  big  central  plaza  is  completely 
fenced  in  by  splendid  cars  parked  compactly  ends  to  curb.  Toward 
sunset,  especially  on  the  days  when  a  military  band  plays  the  retreta 
in  the  kiosk  facing  Morro  Castle  and  the  harbor  entrance,  an  endless 
procession  of  seven-passenger  motors  files  up  and  down  the  wide  Prado 
and  along  the  sea-washed  Malecon,  two,  or  at  most  three,  haughty  be- 
ings, not  infrequently  with  kinky  hair,  lolling  in  every  capacious  ton- 
neau.  Liveried  chauffeurs  are  the  almost  universal  rule.  The  cabal- 
ilero  who  drives  his  own  car  would  arouse  the  wonder,  possibly  the 
scorn,  of  his  fellow-citizens ;  once  and  once  only  did  we  see  a  woman 
at  the  wheel.  There  is  good  reason  for  this.  The  man  who  would 
learn  to  pilot  his  own  machine  through  the  automobile  maelstrom  of 
Havana  would  have  little  time  or  energy  left  for  the  pursuit  of  his 
profession.  Moreover,  the  Latin-American  is  seldom  mechanic- 
minded.  The  cheaper  grades  of  cars  are  not  in  favor  for  private  use. 
Wire  wheels  are  almost  universal ;  luxurious  fittings  are  seldom  lack' 
ing.  Even  the  unexclusive  Ford  is  certain  to  be  decked  out  in  ex- 
pensive vestiduras, —  slip-covers  of  embossed  leather  that  remind  one 
of  a  Mexican  peon  in  silver-mounted  sombrero. 

The  cost  of  a  car  in  Havana  is  from  twenty  to  thirty  per  cent,  higher 
than  in  the  States,  which  supplies  virtually  all  of  them.  A  dollar  barely 
pays  for  two  gallons  of  gasolene.  Licenses  are  a  serious  item,  par* 
ticularly  to  private  owners  in  Havana,  for  the  fee  depends  on  the  use 
to  which  the  car  is  put.  Fords  for  hire  carry  a  white  tag  with  black 


32  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

figures  and  pay  $12.50  a  year.  Private  cars  bear  a  pink  chapa  at  a 
cost  of  $62.50.  Tags  with  blue  figures  announce  the  occupant  a  gov- 
ernment official  or  a  physician.  Then,  every  driver  must  be  supplied 
with  a  personal  license,  at  a  cost  of  $25.  In  theory  that  is  all,  except 
a  day  or  two  of  waiting  in  line  at  the  municipal  license  bureau.  In 
practice  there  are  many  little  political  wheels  to  be  oiled  if  one  would 
see  the  car  free  to  go  its  way  the  same  year  it  is  purchased. 

Once  the  visitor  has  learned  to  distinguish  the  tag  that  announces 
government  ownership,  he  will  be  astounded  to  note  its  extraordinary 
prevalence  in  Havana.  Even  Washington  was  never  like  this.  Gov- 
ernment property  means  public  ownership  indeed  in  Cuba.  If  one 
may  believe  the  newspapers  of  the  Liberal  party, —  the  "outs"  under 
the  present  administration, —  the  explanation  is  simple.  "  Every  gov- 
erment  employee,"  they  shriek,  "  down  to  the  last  post-office  clerk  who 
is  in  personal  favor,  has  his  own  private  car,  free  of  cost ;  not  only  that, 
but  he  may  use  it  to  give  his  babies  an  airing,  to  carry  his  cook  to 
market,  or  to  take  the  future  novio  of  his  daughter  on  a  joy  ride." 

The  new-comer's  impressions  of  Havana  will  depend  largely  upon 
his  previous  travels.  If  this  is  his  first  contact  with  the  Iberian  or 
the  Latin- American  civilization,  he  will  find  the  Cuban  capital  of  great 
interest.  If  he  is  familiar  with  the  cities  of  old  Spain,  particularly  if 
he  has  already  seen  her  farthest-flung  descendants,  such  as  Bogota, 
Quito,  or  La  Paz,  he  will  probably  call  Havana  "  tame."  The  most 
incorrigible  traveler  will  certainly  not  consider  a  visit  to  this  most  ac- 
cessible of  foreign  capitals  time  wasted.  But  his  chief  amusement  will 
be,  in  all  likelihood,  that  of  tracing  the  curious  dovetailing  of  Spanish 
and  American  influences  which  makes  up  its  present-day  aspect. 

Both  by  situation  and  history  the  capital  of  Cuba  is  a  natural  place 
for  this  intermingling  of  two  essentially  different  civilizations,  but 
the  mixture  is  more  like  that  of  oil  and  water  than  of  two  related  ele- 
ments. The  ways  of  Spain  and  of  America  —  by  which,  of  course,  I 
mean  the  United  States  —  are  recognizable  in  every  block  of  Havana, 
yet  there  has  been  but  slight  blending  together,  however  close  the  con- 
tact. Immigrants  from  old  Spain  tramp  the  streets  all  day  under  their 
strings  of  garlic,  or  jingle  the  cymbals  that  mean  sweetmeats  for  sale  to 
all  Spanish-speaking  children.  Venders  of  lottery-tickets  sing  their 
numbers  in  every  public  gathering-place.  On  Saturdays  a  long  pro- 
cession of  beggars  of  both  sexes  file  through  the  stores  and  offices  de- 
manding almost  as  a  right  the  cent  each  which  ancient  Iberian  custom 


RANDOM  SKETCHES  OF  HAVANA        33 

allots  them.  The  places  where  men  gather  are  wide-open  cafes  with- 
out front  walls,  rather  than  the  hidden  dens  of  the  North.  Havana's 
cooking,  her  modes  of  greeting  and  parting,  her  patience  with  individual 
nuisance,  her  very  table  manners  are  Spanish.  Like  all  Spanish- 
America,  her  sons  and  daughters  are  highly  proficient  in  the  use  of 
the  toothpick;  like  them  they  are  exceedingly  courteous  in  the  forms 
of  social  intercourse,  irrespective  of  class.  As  in  Spain,  life  increases 
in  its  intensity  with  sunset:  babies  have  no  fixed  hour  of  retirement; 
midnight  is  everywhere  the  "shank  of  the  evening";  lovers  are  sternly 
separated  by  iron  bars,  or  their  soft  nothings  strictly  censored  by  ever 
vigilant  duennas. 

The  very  Government  cannot  shake  off  the  habits  of  its  forebears, 
despite  the  tutelage  of  a  more  practical  race.  Public  office  is  more 
apt  than  not  to  be  considered  a  legitimate  source  of  personal  gain.  As 
in  Spain,  a  general  amnesty  is  .ever  smiling  hopefully  at  imprisoned 
malefactors.  The  Spanish  tendency  to  forgive  crime,  combined  with 
the  interrelationship  of  miscreants  and  the  powers  that  be,  has  not 
merely  abolished,  in  practice,  all  capital  punishment ;  it  tends  to  release 
evil-doers  long  before  they  have  found  time  to  repent  and  change  their 
ways.  Men  who  shoot  down  in  cold  blood  —  and  this  they  do  even 
in  the  heart  of  Havana  —  have  only  to  prove  that  the  deed  was  done 
"  in  the  heat  of  the  moment "  to  have  their  punishment  reduced  to  a 
mere  fraction  of  that  for  stealing  a  mule.  The  pardoning  power  is 
wielded  with  such  Castilian  generosity  that  the  genial  editor  of  Havana's 
American  newspaper  wrathfully  suggests  the  "  loosing  of  all  our  dis- 
tinguished assassins,"  that  the  enormous  cdrcel  facing  the  harbor  en- 
trance may  be  replaced  by  one  of  the  hotels  sadly  needed  to  house 
Havana's  "  distinguished  visitors." 

Amid  all  this  the  island  capital  is  deeply  marked,  too,  with  the  in- 
fluence of  what  Latin-America  calls  "  the  Colossus  of  the  North." 
One  sees  it  in  the  strenuous  pace  of  business,  in  the  manners  and 
methods  of  commerce.  The  dignified  lethargy  of  Spain  has  largely 
given  way  to  the  business-first  teachings  of  the  Yankee  gospel.  Bill- 
boards are  almost  as  constant  eyesores  in  Havana  and  her  suburbs  as 
in  New  York;  huge  electric  figures  flash  the  alleged  virtues  of  wares 
far  into  the  soft  summer  nights.  Blocks  of  office  buildings,  modern 
in  every  particular,  shoulder  their  way  upward  into  the  tropical  sky. 
With  few  exceptions  the  sons  of  proud  old  Cuban  families  scorn  to 
dally  away  their  lives,  Castilian  fashion,  on  the  riches  and  reputations 
cf  their  ancestors,  but  descend  into  the  commercial  fray. 


34  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

One  sees  the  American  influence  in  many  amusing  little  details. 
The  Cuban  mail-boxes  are  exact  copies  of  our  own,  except  that  the 
lettering  is  Spanish.  Postage-stamps  may  be  had  in  booklet  form, 
which  can  be  said  of  no  other  foreign  land.  Street-car  fares  are  five 
cents  for  any  distance,  with  free  transfers,  rather  than  varying  by 
zones,  as  in  Europe.  Barbers  dally  over  their  clients  in  the  private- 
valet  manner  of  their  fellows  to  the  north.  Department  stores  operate 
as  nearly  as  possible  on  the  American  plan,  despite  the  Spanish  ten- 
dency of  their  clerks  to  seek  tips.  Cuban  advertisers  struggle  to  imi- 
tate in  their  newspaper  and  poster  announcements  the  aggressive,  in- 
viting American  manner,  often  with  ludicrous  results,  for  they  are 
rarely  gifted  with  what  might  be  called  the  advertising  imagination. 
In  a  word,  Havana  is  Spain  with  a  modern  American  virility,  tinged 
with  a  generous  dash  of  the  tropics. 

I  have  said  that  -the  two  opposing  influences  do  not  mix,  and  in  the 
main  that  rule  -strictly  holds.  A  glance  at  any  detail  of  the  city's  life, 
her  customs,  appearance,  or  point  of  view,  suffices  to  determine  whether 
it  is  of  Castilian  or  Yankee  origin.  But  here  and  there  a  fusing  of 
the  two  has  produced  a  quaint  mongrel  of  local  color.  Havana  bakes 
its  bread  in  the  long  loaves  of  Europe,  but  an  American  squeamishness 
has  evolved  a  slender  paper  bag  to  cover  them.  The  language  of  ges- 
tures makes  a  crossing  of  two  figures,  a  hiss  at  the  conductor,  and  a 
nod  to  right  or  left,  sufficient  request  for  a  street-car  transfer.  The 
man  who  occupies  the  center  of  a  baseball  diamond  may  be  called 
either  a  pitcher  or  a  lanzador,  but  the  verb  that  expresses  his  activity  is 
pitchear.  Shoe-shining  establishments  in  the  shade  of  the  long,  pillared 
arcades  are  arranged  in  Spanish  style,  yet  the  methods  and  the  prices 
of  the  polishers  are  American. 

Barely  had  we  stepped  ashore  in  Havana  when  I  spied  a  man  in  the 
familiar  uniform  of  the  American  Army,  his  upper  sleeve  decorated 
with  three  broad  chevrons.  I  had  a  hazy  notion  that  our  intervention 
in  Cuba  had  ceased  some  time  before,  yet  it  would  have  been  nothing 
strange  if  some  of  our  troops  had  been  left  on  the  island. 

"  Good  morning,  Sergeant,"  I  greeted  him.  "  Do  you  know  this 
town  ?  How  do  I  get  to  — " 

But  he  was  staring  at  me  with  a  puzzled  air,  and  before  I  could 
finish  he  had  sidestepped  and  hurried  on.  I  must  have  been  dense 
that  morning,  after  a  night  of  uproar  on  the  steamer  from  Key  West, 
for  a  score  of  his  fellows  had  passed  before  I  awoke  to  the  fact  that 


RANDOM  SKETCHES  OF  HAVANA       35 

they  were  not  American  soldiers  at  all.  Cuba  has  copied  nothing 
more  exactly  than  our  army  uniform.  Cotton  khaki  survives  in  place 
of  olive  drab,  of  course,  as  befits  the  Cuban  climate ;  frequent  wash- 
ings have  turned  most  of  the  canvas  leggings  a  creamy  white.  Other- 
wise there  is  little  to  distinguish  the  Cuban  soldier  from  our  own  until 
he  opens  his  mouth  in  a  spurt  of  fluent  Spanish.  He  wears  the  same 
cow-boy  sombrero,  with  similar  hat-cords  for  each  branch  of  the 
service.  He  shoulders  the  same  rifle,  carries  his  cartridges  in  the  old 
familiar  web-belt,  wears  his  revolver  on  the  right,  as  distinct  from  the 
left-handed  fashion  of  all  the  rest  of  Latin-America.  He  salutes, 
mounts  guard,  drills,  stands  at  attention  precisely  in  the  American 
manner,  for  his  "  I.  D.  R."  differs  from  our  own  only  in  tongue.  The 
same  chevrons  indicate  non-commissioned  rank,  though  they  have  not 
yet  disappeared  from  the  left  sleeve.  His  officers  are  indistinguishable, 
*t  any  distance,  from  our  own;  they  are  in  many  cases  graduates  of 
West  Point.  An  angle  in  their  shoulder-bars,  with  the  Cuban  seal  in 
bronze  above  them,  and  the  native  coat  of  arms  on  their  caps  in  place 
of  the  spread  eagle,  are  the  only  differences  that  a  close  inspection  of 
lieutenants  or  captains  brings  to  light.  From  majors  upward,  how- 
ever, the  insignia  becomes  a  series  of  stars,  perhaps  because  the  ab- 
sence of  generals  in  the  Cuban  Army  leaves  no  other  chance  for  such 
ostentation. 

The  question  naturally  suggests  itself,  "  Why  does  Cuba  need  an 
army  ?  "  The  native  answer  is  apt  to  be  the  Spanish  version  of  "  Huh, 
we  're  a  free  country,  are  n't  we  ?  Why  should  n't  we  have  an  army, 
like  any  other  sovereign  people  ?  Poor  Estrada  Palma,  our  first  presi- 
dent, had  no  army,  with  the  result  that  the  first  bunch  of  hoodlums  to 
start  a  revolution  had  him  at  their  mercy." 

These  are  the  two  reasons  why  one  sees  the  streets  of  Havana,  and 
all  Cuba,  for  that  matter,  khaki-dotted  with  soldiers.  She  has  no  de- 
signs on  a  trembling  world,  but  an  army  is  to  her  what  long  trousers 
are  to  a  youth  of  sixteen,  proof  of  his  manhood ;  and  she  has  very  real 
need  of  one  to  keep  the  internal  peace  within  the  country,  particularly 
under  a  Government  that  was  not  legally  elected  and  which  enjoys  little 
popularity. 

There  were  some  fourteen  thousand  "  regulars  "  in  the  Cuban  Army 
before  the  European  War,  a  number  that  was  more  than  tripled  un- 
der compulsory  service  after  the  island  republic  joined  the  Allies. 
To-day,  despite  posters  idealizing  the  soldier's  life  and  assuring  all 
Cubans  that  it  is  their  duty  to  enlist,  despite  a  scale  of  pay  equalling  our 


36  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

own,  their  land  force  numbers  barely  five  thousand.  Many  of  these 
are  veterans  of  the  great  European  war, —  as  fought  in  Pensacola, 
Florida.  Some  wear  fifteen  to  eighteen  years'  worth  of  service  stripes 
diagonally  across  their  lower  sleeves;  a  few  played  their  part  in  the 
guerilla  warfare  against  the  Spaniards  before  the  days  of  indepen- 
dence, and  have  many  a  thrilling  anecdote  with  which  to  overawe  each 
new  group  of  "  rookies."  In  short,  they  have  nearly  everything  in 
common  with  our  own  permanent  soldiers  —  except  the  color-line. 
I  have  yet  to  see  a  squad  of  white,  or  partly  white,  American  soldiers 
march  away  to  duty  under  a  jet-black  corporal,  a  sight  so  common-place 
in  Havana  as  not  even  to  attract  a  passing  attention. 

Havana  has  just  celebrated  her  four-hundredth  birthday.  She  con- 
fesses herself  the  oldest  city  of  European  origin  in  the  western  hemi- 
sphere. Her  name  was  familiar  to  ocean  wayfarers  before  Cortes 
penetrated  to  the  Vale  of  Anahuac,  before  Pizarro  had  heard  the  first 
rumors  of  the  mysterious  land  of  the  Incas.  When  the  Pilgrim  Fathers 
sighted  Plymouth  Rock,  Havana  had  begun  the  second  century  of  her 
existence.  In  view  of  all  this,  and  of  the  narried  career  she  led  clear 
down  to  days  within  the  memory  of  men  who  still  consider  themselves 
youthful,  she  is  somewhat  disappointing  to  the  mere  tourist  for  her 
lack  of  historical  relics.  This  impression,  however,  gradually  wears 
off.  Her  background  is  certainly  not  to  be  compared  with  that  of 
Cuzco  or  of  the  City  of  Mexico,  stretching  away  into  the  prehistoric 
days  of  legend ;  yet  many  reminders  of  the  times  that  are  gone  peer 
through  the  mantle  of  modernity  in  which  she  has  wrapped  herself. 
From  the  age-worn  stones  of  La  Fuerza  the  bustle  of  the  city  of  to-day 
seems  a  fantasy  from  dreamland.  In  the  underground  passages  of  old 
Morro,  in  the  musty  dungeons  of  massive  Cabana,  the  khaki-clad  sol- 
diers of  Cuba's  new  army  look  as  out  of  place  as  motor-cars  in  a  Roman 
arena.  The  stroller  who  catches  a  sudden  unexpected  glimpse  of  the 
cathedral  fagade  is  carried  back  in  a  twinkling  to  the  days  of  the  In- 
quisition ;  Spain  herself  can  show  no  closer  link  with  the  Middle  Ages 
than  the  venerable  stone  face  of  San  Francisco  de  Paula.  The  ghosts 
of  monks  gone  to  their  reward  centuries  ago  hover  about  the  post-office 
where  the  modern  visitor  files  his  telegram  or  stamps  his  picture  postals. 
The  British  occupied  it  as  a  barracks  when  they  captured  Havana  in 
the  middle  of  the  last  century,  whereby  the  ancient  monastery  was  con- 
sidered desecrated,  and  has  served  in  turn  various  government  pur- 


RANDOM  SKETCHES  OF  .HAVANA  37 

poses ;  yet  the  shades  of  the  past  still  linger  in  its  flowery  patio  and  flit 
about  the  corners  of  its  capacious,  leisurely  old  stairways. 

Old  Havana  may  be  likened  in  shape  to  the  head  of  a  bulldog,  with 
the  mark  of  the  former  city  wall,  which  inclosed  it  like  a  muzzle,  still 
visible.  The  part  thus  protected  in  olden  days  contains  most  of 
Havana's  antiquity.  Beyond  it  the  streets  grow  wider,  the  buildings 
more  modern,  as  one  advances  to  the  newer  residential  suburbs.  Amus- 
ing contrasts  catch  the  eye  at  every  turn  within  the  muzzled  portion. 
Calle  Obispo,  still  the  principal  business  street,  is  a  scant  eighteen  feet 
wide,  inclusive  of  its  two  pathetically  narrow  sidewalks.  The  Span- 
ish builders  did  not  foresee  the  day  when  it  would  be  an  impassable 
river  of  clamoring  automobiles.  They  would  be  struck  dumb  with 
astonishment  to  see  these  strange  devil-wagons  housed  in  the  tiled 
passageways  behind  the  massive  carved  or  brass-studded  doors  of  the 
regal  mansions  of  colonial  days,  as  their  fair  ladies  would  be  horrified 
to  find  the  family  chapels  turned  into  bath-rooms  by  desecrating  bar- 
barians from  the  North.  Office  buildings  that  seem  to  have  been  bodily 
transported  from  New  York  shoulder  age-crumbled  Spanish  churches 
and  convents;  crowds  as  business-bent  as  those  of  Wall  Street  hurry 
through  narrow  callejones  that  seem  still  to  be  thinking  of  Columbus 
and  the  buccaneers  of  the  Spanish  main.  Long  rows  of  massive  pillars 
upholding  projecting  second  stories  and  half  concealing  the  den-like 
shops  behind  them  have  a  picturesque  appearance  and  afford  a  needed 
protection  from  the  Cuban  sun,  but  they  are  little  short  of  a  nuisance 
under  modern  traffic  conditions.  Old  Colon  market  is  as  dark  and  un- 
sanitary as  when  mistresses  sent  a  trusted  slave  to  make  the  day's  pur- 
chases. Its  long  lines  of  cackling  fowls,  of  meat  barely  dead,  of  tropical 
fruits  and  strange  Cuban  vegetables,  are  still  the  center  of  the  old 
bartering  hubbub,  but  beside  them  are  the  very  latest  factory  products. 
One  may  buy  a  chicken  and  have  it  killed  and  dressed  on  the  spot  for  a 
real  by  deep-eyed  old  women  who  seem  to  have  been  left  behind  by  a 
receding  generation,  or  one  may  carry  home  canned  food  which  colonial 
Havana  never  tasted. 

The  city  is  as  brilliantly  lighted  as  any  of  our  own,  by  dusky  men 
who  come  at  sunset,  laboriously  carrying  long  ladders,  from  the  tops 
of  which  they  touch  off  each  gas  jet  as  in  the  days  of  Tacon.  Fer- 
ries as  modern  as  those  bridging  the  Hudson  ply  between  the  Muelle 
de  Luz  and  the  fortresses  and  towns  across  the  harbor;  but  they  still 
have  as  competitors  the  heavy  old  Havana  rowboats,  equipped,  when 


38  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

the  sun  is  high,  with  awnings  at  the  rear,  and  manned  by  oarsmen  as 
stout-armed  and  weather-tanned  as  the  gondoliers  of  Venice.  Auto- 
mobiles of  the  latest  model  snort  in  continual  procession  around  the 
Malecon  on  Sunday  afternoons,  yet  here  and  there  a  quaint  old  family 
carriage,  with  its  liveried  footmen,  jogs  along  between  them.  Many 
a  street  has  changed  its  name  since  the  days  of  independence,  but  still 
clings  to  its  old  Spanish  title  in  popular  parlance.  A  new  system  of 
house  numbering,  too,  has  been  adopted,  but  this  has  not  superseded 
the  old ;  it  has  merely  been  superimposed  upon  it,  until  it  is  a  wise  door 
indeed  that  knows  its  own  number.  To  make  things  worse  for  the 
puzzled  stranger,  the  two  sides  of  the  street  have  nothing  in  common, 
so  that  it  is  nothing  unusual  to  find  house  No.  7  opposite  No.  1 14. 

Havana  is  most  beautiful  at  night.  Its  walls  are  light  in  color,  yel- 
low, orange,  pink,  pale-blue,  and  the  like  prevailing,  and  the  witchery 
of  moonlight,  falling  upon  them,  gives  many  a  quaint  corner  or  nar- 
row street  of  the  old  city  a  resemblance  to  fairy-land.  But  when  one 
hurries  back  to  catch  them  with  a  kodak  in  the  morning,  it  is  only  to 
find  that  the  chief  charm  has  fled  before  the  grueling  light  of  day. 

The  architecture  of  the  city  is  overwhelmingly  Spanish,  with  only 
here  and  there  a  detail  brought  from  the  North.  The  change  from  the 
wooden  houses  of  Key  West,  with  their  steep  shingled  roofs,  to  the 
plaster-faced  edifices  of  Havana,  covered  by  the  flat  azoteas  of  Arab- 
Iberian  origin  often  the  family  sitting-room  after  sunset,  is  sharp  and 
decided.  Among  them  the  visitor  feels  himself  in  a  foreign  land  in- 
deed, whatever  suggestions  of  his  own  he  may  find  in  the  life  of  the 
city.  The  tendency  for  low  structures,  the  prevalence  of  sumptuous 
dwellings  of  a  single  story,  the  preference  for  the  ground  floor  as  a 
place  of  residence,  show  at  a  glance  that  this  is  no  American  city. 
Yet  the  single  story  is  almost  as  lofty  as  two  of  our  own ;  the  Cuban 
insists  on  high  ceilings,  and  the  longest  rooms  of  the  average  residence 
would  be  still  longer  if  they  were  laid  on  their  sides.  To  our  Northern 
syes  it  is  a  heavy  architecture,  but  it  is  a  natural  development  in  the 
Cuban  climate.  Coolness  is  the  first  and  prime  requisite.  Massive 
outer  walls,  half  their  surfaces  taken  up  by  immense  doors  and  win- 
dows, protected  by  gratings  in  every  manner  of  artistic  scroll,  defy 
the  heat  of  perpetual  summer,  and  at  the  same  time  give  free  play 
to  the  all  but  constant  sea  breezes.  The  openness  of  living  which  this 
style  of  dwelling  brings  with  it  would  not  appeal  to  the  American  sense 
of  privacy  in  family  life.  Through  the  iron-barred  rejas,  flush  with 
the  sidewalk,  the  passer-by  may  look  deep  back  into  the  tile-floored 


RANDOM  SKETCHES  OF  HAVANA        39 

parlor,  with  its  forest  of  chairs,  and  often  into  the  living-rooms  be- 
yond. At  midday  they  look  particularly  cool  and  inviting  from  the 
sun-drenched  street ;  in  the  evening  the  stroller  has  a  sense  of  saunter- 
ing unmolested  through  the  very  heart  of  a  hundred  family  circles. 

Old  residents  tell  us  that  Havana  is  a  far  different  city  from  the  one 
from  which  the  Spanish  flag  was  banished  twenty  years  ago.  Its  best 
streets,  they  say,  were  then  mere  lanes  of  mud,  or  their  cobbled  pave- 
ments so  far  down  beneath  the  filth  of  generations  that  the  uncovering 
of  them  resembled  a  mining  operation.  Along  the  sea,  where  a  boule- 
vard second  only  to  the  peerless  Beira  Mar  of  Rio  runs  to-day,  the  last 
century  left  a  stenching  city  garbage-heap.  The  broad,  laurel-shaded 
Prado  leading  from  the  beautiful  central  plaza  to  the  headland  facing 
Morro  Castle  was  a  labyrinthian  cluster  of  unsavory  hovels.  All 
this,  if  one  may  be  pardoned  a  suggestion  of  boasting,  was  accom- 
plished by  the  first  American  governor.  But  the  Cubans  themselves 
have  continued  the  good  work.  Once  cleaned  and  paved,  the  streets 
have  remained  so.  Buildings  of  which  any  city  might  be  proud  have 
been  erected  without  foreign  assistance.  In  their  sudden  spurt  of 
ambition  the  Cubans  have  sometimes  overreached  themselves.  A 
former  administration  began  the  erection  of  a  presidential  palace  des- 
tined to  rival  the  best  of  Europe.  About  the  same  time  the  provincial 
governor  concluded  to  build  himself  a  simple  little  marble  cabin.  Elec- 
tion day  came,  and  the  new  president,  after  the  spendthrift  manner 
of  Latin-American  executives,  repudiated  the  undertaking  of  his 
predecessor,  which  lies  to-day  the  abandoned  grave  of  several  million 
pesos.  The  governor  of  the  province  was  convinced  by  irrefutable 
arguments  thar  his  half-finished  little  cabin  was  out  of  proportion  to  his 
importance,  ana  yielded  it  to  his  political  superior.  It  is  nearing  com- 
pletion now,  a  thing  of  beauty  that  should,  for  a  time  at  least,  satisfy 
the  artistic  longings  even  of  great  Cuba.  For  it  has  nothing  of  the 
inexpensive  Jefferspnian  simplicity  of  our  own  White  House,  fit  only 
for  such  plebeian  occupants  as  our  Lincolns  and  Garfields,  but  is  worthy 
a  Cuban  president  —  during  the  few  months  of  the  year  when  he  is 
not  occupying  his  suburban  or  his  summer  palace. 

Havana  has  grown  in  breadth  as  well  as  character  since  it  became 
the  capital  of  a  free  country.  While  the  population  of  the  island  has 
nearly  doubled,  that  of  the  metropolis  has  trebled.  Vibora,  Cerro,  and 
Jesus  del  Monte  have  changed  from  outlying  country  villages  of 
thatched  huts  to  thriving  suburbs ;  Vedado,  the  abode  of  a  few  scat- 
tered farmers  when  the  Treaty  of  Paris  was  signed,  has  become  a  great 


40  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

residential  region  where  sugar-millionaires  and  successful  politicians 
vie  with  one  another  in  the  erection  of  private  palaces,  not  to  mention 
the  occasional  perpetration  of  architectural  monstrosities.  Under  the 
impulse  of  an  ever-increasing  and  ever-wealthier  population,  abetted 
by  energetic  young  Cubans  who  have  copied  American  real-estate  meth- 
ods, Havana  is  already  leaping  like  a  prairie  fire  to  the  crests  of  new 
fields,  which  will  soon  be  wholly  embraced  in  the  conflagration  of 
prosperity. 

One  of  the  purposes  of  Cuba's  revolt  against  Spain  was  the  sup- 
pression of  the  lottery.  For  years  the  new  republic  sternly  frowned 
down  any  tendency  toward  a  return  of  this  particular  form  of  vice. 
To  this  day  it  is  unlawful  to  bring  the  tickets  of  the  Spanish  lottery 
into  the  island.  But  blood  will  tell,  and  the  mere  winning  of  political 
freedom  could  not  cure  the  Cuban  of  his  love  for  gambling.  Private 
games  of  chance  increased  in  number  and  spread  throughout  the 
island.  The  Government  saw  itself  losing  millions  of  revenue  yearly, 
while  enterprising  persons  enriched  themselves;  for  to  all  rulers  of 
Iberian  ancestry  the  exploitation  of  a  people's  gambling  instinct  seems 
a  legitimate  source  of  state  income.  New  palaces  and  boulevards  cost 
money,  independence  brings  with  it  unexpected  expenditures.  By  the 
end  of  the  second  intervention  the  free  Cubans  were  looking  with  favor 
upon  a  system  which  they  had  professed  to  abhor  as  Spanish  subjects. 
The  law  of  July  7,  1909,  decreed  a  public  revenue  under  the  name  of 
"  Loteria  Nacional,"  and  to-day  the  lottery  is  as  firmly  established  a 
function  of  the  Government  as  the  postal  service. 

There  are  two  advantages  in  a  state  lottery  —  to  the  government. 
It  is  not  only  an  unfailing  source  of  revenue;  it  is  a  splendid  means 
of  rewarding  political  henchmen.  Colectorias,  the  privilege  of  dis- 
pensing lottery-tickets  within  a  given  district,  are  to  the  Cuban  con- 
gressman what  postmasterships  are  to  our  own.  The  possession  of 
one  is  a  botella  (bottle),  Cuban  slang  for  sinecure;  the  lucky  possessor 
is  called  a  botcllero.  He  in  turn  distributes  his  patronage  to  the  lesser 
fry  and  becomes  a  political  power  within  his  district.  The  whole  makes 
a  splendidly  compact  machine  that  can  be  turned  to  any  purpose  by 
the  chauffeur  at  the  political  wheel. 

The  first  and  indispensible  requisite  of  a  state  lottery  is  that  the 
drawings  shall  be  honest.  Your  Spanish-minded  citizen  will  no  more 
do  without  his  gambling  than  he  will  drink  water  with  his  meals;  but 
let  him  for  a  moment  suspect  that  "  the  game  is  crooked  "  and  he  will 


RANDOM  SKETCHES  OF  HAVANA  41 

abandon  the  purchase  of  government  tickets  for  some  other  means  of 
snatching  sudden  fortune.  The  drawing  of  the  Cuban  lottery  is  sur- 
rounded by  every  possible  check  on  dishonesty.  By  no  conceivable 
chance  could  the  inmost  circle  of  the  inner  lottery  councils  guess 
the  winning  number  an  instant  before  it  is  publicly  drawn.  But  there 
is  another  way  in  which  the  game  is  not  a  "  fair  shake  "  to  the  players, 
though  the  simpler  type  of  Cuban  does  not  recognise  the  unfairness. 
The  average  lottery,  for  instance,  offers  $420,000  in  prizes.  The  legal 
price  of  the  tickets  is  $20,  divided  into  a  hundred  "  pieces  "  for  the  con- 
venience of  small  gamblers,  at  a  peseta  each.  Thirty  -thousand  tickets 
are  sold,  of  which  30%  of  the  proceeds,  or  $180,000,  goes  to  the  gov- 
ernment or  its  favorite  henchmen.  That  leaves  to  begin  with  only 
fourteen  of  his  twenty  cents  that  can  come  back  to  the  player.  Then 
the  law  allows  the  vendor  5%  as  his  profit,  bringing  the  fractional 
ticket  up  to  twenty-one  cents.  If  that  were  all,  the  players  would  still 
have  even  chances  of  a  reasonable  return.  But  the  "  pieces  "  are  never 
sold  at  that  price,  despite  the  law  and  its  threat  of  dire  punishment, 
printed  on  the  ticket  itself.  From  one  end  of  the  island  to  the  other 
the  billeteros  demand  at  least  $30  a  billete;  in  other  words  the  public 
is  taxed  one  half  as  much  as  it  puts  into  the  lottery  itself  to  support 
thousands  of  utterly  useless  members  of  society,  the  ticket-sellers,  and 
instead  of  getting  two-thirds  of  its  money  back  it  has  a  chance  of  re- 
winning  less  than  half  the  sum  hazarded.  The  most  optimistic  negro 
deckhand  on  a  Missississippi  steamboat  would  hardly  enter  a  crap 
game  in  which  the  "  bones  "  were  so  palpably  "  loaded."  Yet  Cubans 
of  high  and  low  degree,  from  big  merchants  to  bootblacks,  pay  their 
tribute  regularly  to  the  Loteria  National. 

Barely  had  we  arrived  in  Havana  when  the  rumor  reached  me  that 
the  hilleteros  could  be  compelled  to  sell  their  tickets  at  the  legal  price, 
if  one  "  had  the  nerve  "  to  insist.  I  abhor  a  financial  dispute,  but  I 
have  as  little  use  for  hearsay  evidence.  I  concluded  to  test  the  great 
question  personally.  Having  purchased  two  "  pieces  "  at  the  customary 
price,  to  forestall  any  charge  of  miserliness,  I  set  out  to  buy  one  at  the 
lawful  rate.  A  booth  on  a  busy  corner  of  Calle  Obispo,  a  large  choice 
of  numbers  fluttering  from  its  ticket-racks,  seemed  the  most  promising 
scene  for  my  nefarious  project,  because  a  traffic  policeman  stood  close 
by.  I  chose  a  "  piece  "  and,  having  tucked  it  away  in  a  pocket,  handed 
the  vender  a  peseta. 

"  It  is  thirty  cents,"  he  announced  politely,  smiling  at  what  he  took 
to  be  my  American  innocence. 


42  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

"  Not  at  all,"  I  answered,  blushing  at  my  own  pettiness.  "  The 
price  is  twenty  cents ;  it  is  printed  on  the  ticket." 

"  /  sell  them  only  at  thirty,"  he  replied,  with  a  gesture  that  invited  me 
to  return  the  ticket. 

"  The  legal  price  is  all  I  pay,"  I  retorted.  "If  you  don't  like  that, 
call  the  policeman,"  and  I  strolled  slowly  on.  In  an  instant  both  the 
vender  and  the  officer  were  hurrying  after  me.  The  latter  demanded 
why  I  had  not  paid  the  amount  asked. 

"  The  law  sets  the  price  at  twenty  cents,"  I  explained.  "  As  a  guar- 
dian of  order,  you  surely  do  not  mean  to  help  this  man  collect  an  illegal 
sum." 

The  policeman  gave  me  a  look  of  scorn  such  as  he  might  have  turned 
upon  a  millionaire  caught  stealing  chickens,  and  answered  with  a  sneer : 

"  He  is  entitled  to  one  cent  profit." 

"  But  not  to  ten  cents,"  I  added  triumphantly. 

The  guardian  of  law  and  order  grunted  an  unwilling  affirmative, 
casting  a  pitying  glance  up  and  down  my  person,  and  turned  away  with 
another  audible  sneer  only  when  I  had  produced  a  cent.  The  vender 
snatched  the  coin  with  an  expression  of  disgust,  and  retains  to  this  day, 
I  suppose,  a  much  lower  opinion  of  Americans. 

This  -silly  ordeal,  which  I  have  never  since  had  the  courage  to  repeat, 
proved  the  assertion  that  the  Cubans  may  buy  their  lottery-tickets  at 
the  legal  price,  but  it  demonstrated  at  the  same  time  why  few  of  them 
do  so.  Pride  is  the  chief  ally  of  the  profiteer.  The  difference  between 
twenty  cents  and  thirty  is  not  worth  a  dispute,  but  the  failure  of  the 
individual  Cuban  to  insist  upon  his  rights,  and  of  his  Government  to 
protect  them,  constitutes  a  serious  tax  upon  the  nation  and  enriches 
many  a  worthless  loafer.  With  some  forty  lottery  drawings  a  year, 
this  extra,  illegal  ten  cents  a  "  piece  "  costs  the  Cuban  people  the  neat 
little  sum  of  at  least  $12,000,000  a  year,  or  four  dollars  per  capita. 

The  drawings  take  place  every  ten  days,  besides  a  few  loterias  ex- 
traor dinar ias,  with  prizes  several  times  larger,  on  the  principal  holi- 
days. They  are  conducted  in  the  old  treasury  building  down  near  the 
end  of  Calle  Obispo.  We  reached  there  soon  after  seven  of  the  morn- 
ing named  on  our  tickets.  A  crowd  of  two  hundred  or  more  heavy- 
mouthed  negroes,  poorly  clad  mestizos,  and  ragged,  emaciated  old 
Chinamen  for  the  most  part,  were  huddled  together  in  the  shade  at  the 
edge  of  the  porch-like  room.  A  policeman  —  not  the  one  whose  scorn 
I  had  aroused  —  beckoned  us  to  step  inside  and  take  one  of  the  seats 
of  honor  along  the  wall,  not,  evidently,  because  we  were  Americans, 


43 

but  because  our  clothing  was  not  patched  or  our  collars  missing.  At 
the  back  a  long  table  stretched  the  entire  length  of  the  room.  A  dozen 
solemn  officials,  resembling  a  jury  or  an  election  board,  lolled  in  their 
seats  behind  it,  a  huge  ledger,  a  sheath  of  papers,  an  ink-well  and  several 
pens  and  pencils  before  each  of  them.  At  the  edge  of  the  room,  just 
clear  of  the  standing  crowd  of  hopeful  riffraff,  was  a  similar  table 
on  which  another  group  of  solemn-faced  men  were  busily  scribbling 
in  as  many  large  blank-books,  with  the  sophisticated  air  of  court  or 
congressional  reporters.  Between  the  tables  were  two  globes  of  open- 
work brass,  one  perhaps  six  feet  in  diameter,  the  other  several  times 
smaller.  The  larger  was  filled  with  balls  the  size  of  marbles,  each 
engraved  with  a  number;  the  smaller  one  contained  several  thousand 
others,  representing  varying  sums  of  money. 

Almost  at  the  moment  we  entered  a  gong  sounded.  Four  muscular 
negroes  rushed  forth  from  behind  the  scenes  and,  grasping  two  handles 
projecting  at  the  rear,  turned  the  big  globe  over  and  over,  its  myriad  of 
little  balls  rattling  like  a  stage  wind-storm.  At  the  same  time  an  in- 
dividual of  as  certain,  if  less  decided,  African  ancestry,  solemnly 
shuffled  the  contents  of  the  smaller  sphere  in  the  same  manner.  Then 
the  interrupted  drawing  began  again.  Four  boys,  averaging  eight  years 
of  age,  'stood  in  pairs  at  either  globe.  At  intervals  of  about  thirty  sec- 
onds two  of  them  pulled  levers  that  released  one  marble  from  each 
sphere,  and  which  long  brass  troughs  or  runways  deposited  in  cut- 
glass  bowls  in  front  of  the  other  two  boys.  The  urchin  on  the  big 
globe  side  snatched  up  his  marble,  called  out  a  long  number  —  in  most 
cases  running  into  the  tens  of  thousands  —  and  as  his  voice  ceased,  his 
companion  opposite  announced  the  amount  of  the  prize.  Then  the 
two  balls  were  spitted  side  by  side  on  a  sort  of  Chinese  reckoning- 
board  manipulated  by  another  solemn-faced  adult,  who  now  and  again 
corrected  a  misreading  by  the  boy  calling  the  numbers. 

For  the  hour  we  .remained  this  monotonous  formality  went  steadily 
on,  as  it  does  every  ten  days  from  seven  in  the  morning  until  nearly 
noon,  ceasing  only  when  all  the  balls  in  the  smaller  sphere  have  been 
withdrawn.  Each  of  these  represents  a  prize,  but  as  considerably 
more  than  a  thousand  of  them  are  of  one  hundred  dollars  each  —  or  a 
dollar  a  "  piece  " —  the  almost  constant  "  con  cien  pesos  "  of  the  prize- 
boy  grew  wearisome  in  the  extreme.  The  men  at  the  reporters'  table 
scribbled  every  number  feverishly  with  their  sputtering  steel  pens, 
but  the  "  jury  "  at  the  back  yielded  to  the  soporific  drone  of  childish 
voices  and  dozed  half -open-eyed  in  their  chairs  —  except  when  one  of 


44  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

the  major  prizes  was  announced.  Then  they  sat  up  alertly  at  atten- 
tion, and  inscribed  one  after  another  on  their  massive  ledgers  the  num- 
ber on  the  ball  which  an  official  held  before  each  of  their  noses  in  turn, 
while  the  patch-clad  gathering  outside  the  room  shifted  excitedly  on 
their  weary  feet  and  scanned  the  "  pieces  "  in  their  sweaty  hands  with 
varying  expressions  of  disgust  and  disappointment.  Now  and  then  the 
boys  changed  places,  but  only  one  of  them,  of  dull-brown  complexion 
and  already  gifted  with  the  shifty  eye  of  the  half -cast,  performed  his 
task  to  the  general  satisfaction.  The  others  were  frequently  inter- 
rupted by  a  protest  from  one  of  the  recorders,  whereupon  the  number 
that  had  just  been  called  was  emphatically  reread  by  an  adult,  amid 
much  scratching  of  pens  in  the  leather-bound  ledgers.  If  the  monotony 
of  the  scene  was  wearisome,  its  solemnity  made  it  correspondingly 
amusing.  An  uninformed  observer  would  probably  have  taken  it  for 
at  least  a  presidential  election.  Rachel  asserted  that  it  reminded  her 
of  Alice  in  Wonderland,  but  as  my  education  was  neglected  I  cannot 
confirm  this  impression.  What  aroused  my  own  wonder  was  the  fact 
that  some  two  score  more-or-less-high  officials  of  a  national  govern- 
ment should  be  engaged  in  so  ridiculous  a  formality,  and  that  a  sov- 
ereign republic  should  indulge  in  the  nefarious  profession  of  the  book- 
maker. But  to  every  people  its  own  customs. 

If  I  had  fancied  it  the  fault  of  my  own  ear  that  I  had  not  caught 
all  the  numbers,  the  impression  would  have  been  corrected  by  the 
afternoon  papers.  All  of  them  carried  a  column  or  more  of  protest 
against  the  "  absurd  inefficiency "  of  the  boys  who  had  served  that 
morning;  most  of  them  made  the  complaint  the  chief  subject  of  their 
editorial  pages.  The  Casa  de  Beneficencia  —  an  institution  correspond- 
ing roughly  to  our  orphan  asylums  —  was  solemnly  warned  that  it  must 
thereafter  furnish  more  capable  inmates  to  cantor  las  bolas  ("  sing  the 
balls  ")  on  pain  of  losing  the  privilege  entirely.  Not  only  had  the 
"  uninstructed  urchins "  of  that  morning  made  mistakes  in  reading 
the  numbers  —  a  dastardly  thing  from  the  Cuban  point  of  view  —  but 
had  pronounced  many  of  them  in  so  slovenly  a  manner  that  "  our  special 
reporters  were  unable  to  supply  our  readers  with  correct  information 
on  a  subject  of  prime  importance  to  the  entire  republic."  Beware  that 
k  never  happened  again !  It  was  easy  to  picture  the  poor  overworked 
nuns  of  the  asylum  toiling  far  into  the  night  to  impress  upon  a  multi- 
complexioned  group  of  fatherless  gamins  the  urgent  necessity  of  learn- 
ing to  read  figures  quickly  and  accurately,  if  they  ever  hoped  to  become 


RANDOM  SKETCHES  OF  HAVANA       45 

normal,  full-grown  men  and  perhaps  win  the  big  prize  some  day  them- 
selves. 

Winning  tickets  may  be  cashed  at  any  official  colectoria  at  any  time 
within  a  year,  but  such  delays  are  rare.  Barely  is  the  drawing  ended 
when  the  venders,  armed  with  the  billetes  of  the  next  sorteo,  hurry 
forth  over  their  accustomed  beats  to  pay  the  winners  and  establish  a 
reputation  not  so  much  for  promptitude  as  for  the  ability  to  offer  lucky 
numbers.  The  capital  prize,  $100,000  in  most  cases,  is  perhaps  won 
now  and  then  by  some  favorite  of  fortune,  instead  of  falling  to  the 
Government,  collector  of  all  unsold  winners,  though  I  have  nevef 
personally  known  of  such  a  stroke  of  luck  during  all  my  wanderings 
in  lottery-infested  lands.  Smaller  causes  for  momentary  happiness 
are  more  frequent,  for  with  1741  prizes,  divisible  into  a  hundred 
"  pieces  "  each,  it  would  be  strange  if  a  persistent  player  did  not  now 
and  then  "  make  a  killing."  But  even  these  must  be  rare  in  comparison 
to  the  optimistic  multitude  that  pursues  the  goddess  Chance,  for  on 
the  morning  following  a  drawing  the  streets  of  Havana  are  everywhere 
littered  with  worthless  billetes  cast  off  by  wrathy  purchasers.  Where- 
fore an  incorrigible  moralist  has  deduced  a  motto  that  may  be  worth 
passing  on  to  future  travelers  in  Cuba : 

"  Buy  a  '  piece '  or  two  that  you  may  know  the  sneer  of  Fortune, 
but  don't  get  the  habit." 

Three  days  before  the  wedding  of  my  sister,  mama,  she  and  I  went  to  the 
house  of  my  future  brother-in-law  to  put  Alice's  things  in  order.  The  novio 
was  not  there.  He  had  discreetly  withdrawn  to  a  hotel  and  only  came  home 
now  and  then  for  a  few  moments  to  give  orders  to  the  servants.  If  he  found 
us  there  he  greeted  us  in  the  hall  and  did  not  enter  the  rooms  except  as  we 
invited  him.  As  there  were  no  women  in  his  family  we  had  to  occupy  our- 
selves with  all  these  matters. 

"  Listen,  my  daughter,"  said  mama,  one  night,  after  the  novio  had  gone,  "  when 
to-morrow  you  take  leave  of  your  fiance  do  not  pass  beyond  the  line  marked  on 
the  floor  by  the  light  of  the  hall  lamp."  My  sister  started  to  protest,  "  But,  mama, 
what  is  there  wrong  in  that?"  "Nothing,  daughter,  but  it  is  not  proper.  Do  as 
I  tell  you."  Alice,  though  slightly  displeased  with  the  order,  always  obeyed  it 
thereafter. 

These  two  quotations  from  one  of  Cuba's  latest  novels  give  in  a  nut- 
shell the  position  of  women  in  Cuba.  Like  all  Latin-American  coun- 
tries, especially  of  the  tropics,  it  is  essentially  a  man's  country.  One 
of  the  great  surprises  of  Havana  is  the  scarcity  of  women  on  the 
streets,  even  at  times  when  they  swarm  with  promenading  men.  The 


46  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

Cuban  believes  as  firmly  as  the  old  Spaniard  that  the  woman's  sphere 
is  strictly  behind  the  grill  of  the  front  window,  and  with  few  exceptions 
the  women  agree  with  him.  The  result  is  that  her  interest  in  life 
beyond  her  own  household  is  virtually  nil.  The  "  Woman  Suffrage 
Party  of  Cuba  "  recently  issued  a  pompous  manifesto,  but  it  seems  to 
have  won  about  as  much  support  on  the  island  as  would  a  missionary 
of  the  prohibition  movement.  In  the  words  of  the  militants  of  the  sex 
in  Anglo-Saxon  lands,  "  the  Cuban  woman  has  not  yet  reached  emanci- 
pation." 

The  clerks,  even  in  shops  that  deal  only  in  female  apparel,  are  almost 
exclusively  male.  The  offices  that  employ  stenographers  or  assistants 
from  the  ranks  of  the  fair  sex  are  rare,  and  those  usually  recruit  such 
help  in  the  United  States.  Except  on  gala  occasions,  it  is  extremely 
seldom  that  a  Cuban  girl  of  the  better  class  is  seen  in  public,  and  even 
then  only  in  company  with  a  duenna  or  a  male  member  of  her  immedi- 
ate family,  and  few  married  women  consider  it  proper  to  appear  unac- 
companied by  their  husbands,  despite  American  example.  As  another 
Cuban  writer  has  put  it,  "  One  of  our  greatest  defects  is  the  little  or 
entire  lack  of  genuine  respect  for  women.  Though  we  are  outwardly 
extremely  gallant  in  society  and  sticklers  for  the  finer  points  of 
etiquette-  and  courtesy,  we  almost  always  look  upon  a  woman  merely  as 
a  female  and  our  first  thought  of  at  least  a  young  and  beautiful 
woman  is  to  imagine  all  her  hidden  perfections.  The  instant  a  lady 
comes  within  sight  of  the  average  Cuban  gathering  all  eyes  are  fixed 
upon  her  with  a  stare  that  in  Anglo-Saxon  countries  would  be  more 
than  impertinent,  which  pretends  to  be  flattering,  but  which  at  bottom 
is  truly  insulting."  He  does  not  add  that  the  women  rather  invite 
this  attention  and  feel  themselves  slighted,  their  attractions  unappreci- 
ated, if  it  is  not  given.  Yet  of  open  offenses  against  her  modesty  the 
Cuban  lady  is  freer  than  on  the  streets  of  our  own  large  cities.  Even 
in  restaurants  and  gatherings  where  those  of  the  land  never  appear,  an 
American  woman  is  treated,  except  in  the  matter  of  staring,  with 
genuine  courtesy  by  all  classes. 

The  custom  of  living  almost  exclusively  in  the  privacy  of  her  own 
home  has  given  the  Cuban  woman  a  tendency  to  spend  the  day  in 
disreputable  undress.  Their  hair  dishevelled,  their  forms  loosely  en- 
veloped in  a  bata  or  in  a  slatternly  petticoat  and  dressing-sack,  usually 
torn  and  seldom  clean,  their  toes  thrust  into  slippers  that  slap  at  every 
step,  they  slouch  about  the  house  all  the  endless  day.  Unless  there 
are  guests  they  never  dress  for  lunch,  seldom  for  dinner,  but  don 


RANDOM  SKETCHES  OF  HAVANA       47 

instead  earrings,  necklaces,  bracelets,  and  an  astonishing  collection  of 
finger  rings,  powdering  their  faces  rather  than  washing  them.  During 
meals  the  favorite  topics  of  conversation  are  food  and  digestion;  if 
one  of  them  has  had  any  of  the  numerous  minor  ailments  natural  to  a 
life  of  non-exertion,  it  is  sure  to  be  the  subject  of  a  cacophonous  dis- 
cussion that  lasts  until  the  appearance  of  the  inevitable  toothpicks. 
Servants,  with  whom  they  associate  with  a  familiarity  unknown  in 
Northern  homes,  are  numerous,  and  leave  little  occupation  for  the 
mothers  and  daughters.  The  women  never  read,  not  even  the  news- 
papers, and  their  minds,  poorly  trained  to  begin  with  in  the  nun-taught 
"  finishing  schools,"  go  to  seed  early,  so  that  by  late  youth  or  early 
middle  age  their  faces  show  the  effects  of  a  selfish,  idle  existence  and 
a  life  of  continual  boredom.  But  lest  I  be  accused  of  being  over- 
critical,  let  me  quote  once  more  the  native  writer  already  introduced : 

In  one  of  the  interior  habitations  a  piano  sounded,  beaten  by  a  clumsy  hand 
that  repeated  the  same  immature  exercise  without  cessation.  There  was  general 
discussion  in  the  dining-room  at  all  hours  of  the  day,  mingled  with  the  shrieks  of 
a  parrot  which  swung  on  a  perch  suspended  from  the  ceiling  and  the  constant 
disputes  of  the  children,  who  were  snatching  playthings  from  one  another,  heap- 
ing upon  each  other  every  class  of  verbal  injury.  The  mother  sewed  and  the 
older  children  tortured  the  piano  during  entire  hours,  or  polished  their  nails  with 
much  care,  rubbing  them  with  several  kinds  of  powders.  When  they  had  finished 
these  occupations  they  slouched  from  one  end  of  the  house  to  the  other,  throwing 
themselves  in  turn  upon  all  the  divans  or  into  the  cushioned  rocking-chairs  and 
yawning  with  ennui.  Their  skirts  fell  from  their  belts,  loosened  by  the  languid 
and  lazy  gait.  The  mother  did  not  want  the  girls  to  do  anything  in  the  house  for 
fear  they  would  spoil  their  hands  and  lose  their  chances  of  marriage.  On  the 
other  hand,  in  the  afternoon  when  the  hour  of  visits  drew  near  the  time  was 
always  too  short  to  distribute  harmoniously  the  color  on  their  cheeks  and  lips 
and  to  take  off  the  little  hair  papers  with  which  they  artificially  formed  their 
waves  or  curls  during  the  day. 

This  continual  hubbub  seems  to  be  customary  to  every  household; 
all  intercourse,  be  it  orders  to  servants  or  admonitions  to  the  insuffer- 
able children,  being  carried  on  by  yelling.  And  there  are  no  worse 
voices  in  the  world  than  those  of  the  Cuban  women.  Whether  it  is 
due  to  the  climate  or  to  the  custom  of  reciting  in  chorus  at  school,  they 
have  a  timbre  that  tortures  the  eardrums  like  the  sharpening  of  a  saw, 
and  all  day  long  they  exercise  them  to  the  full  capacity  of  their  lungs. 
Under  no  circumstances  is  one  of  them  given  the  floor  alone,  but  the 
slightest  morsel  of  gossip  is  threshed  to  bits  in  a  free-for-all  whirlwind 
of  incomprehensible  shrieking. 


48  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Cuban  woman  accepts  many  children  willingly, 
and  in  accordance  with  her  lights  is  an  excellent  wife  and  mother. 
Indeed,  she  is  inclined  to  be  over-affectionate,  and  given  to  serving  her 
children  where  they  should  serve  themselves,  with  a  consequent  lack 
of  development  in  their  characters.  The  boys  in  particular  are 
"  spoiled "  by  being  granted  every  whim.  The  men  are  much  less 
often  at  home  than  is  the  case  with  us,  and  seldom  inclined  to  exert  a 
masculine  influence  on  their  obstreperous  sons.  The  result  is  a  lack 
of  self-control  that  makes  itself  felt  through  all  Cuban  manhood,  a 
"  touchiness,"  an  inclination  to  stand  on  their  dignity  instead  of  yielding 
to  the  dictates  of  common  sense. 

But  if  she  is  slouchy  in  the  privacy  of  her  own  household,  the  Cuban 
woman  is  quite  the  opposite  in  public.  The  grande  toilette  is  essential 
for  the  briefest  appearance  on  the  streets.  American  women  assert 
that  there  is  no  definite  style  in  feminine  garb  in  Cuba,  and  I  should 
not  dream  of  questioning  such  authority,  though  to  the  mere  mascu- 
line eye  they  always  seem  "  dressed  within  an  inch  of  their  lives  "  when- 
ever they  emerge  into  the  sunlight.  But  it  does  not  need  even  the 
intuition  of  the  sometimes  unfair  sex  to  recognise  that  a  life  of  physical 
indolence  leaves  their  figures  somewhat  dumpy  and  ungraceful,  seldom 
able  to  appear  to  advantage  even  in  the  best  of  gowns.  Nor  is  it  hard 
to  detect  a  sense  of  discomfort  in  their  unaccustomed  full  dress,  which 
makes  them  eager  to  hurry  home  again  to  the  negligee  of  bat  a  and 
slippers. 

If  the  men  monopolize  other  places  of  public  gathering,  the  churches 
at  least  belong  to  the  women.  There  are  few  places  of  worship  in 
Havana,  or  in  all  Cuba,  for  that  matter,  that  merit  a  visit  for  their  own 
sake.  Though  most  of  them  are  overfilled  with  ambitious  attempts 
at  decoration,  none  of  these  is  very  successful.  A  single  painting  of 
worth  here  and  there,  an  occasional  side  chapel,  one  or  two  carved 
choirstalls,  are  the  only  real  artistic  attractions.  But  several  of  them 
are  well  worth  visiting  for  the  side-lights  they  throw  on  Cuban  cus- 
toms. As  in  Spain,  every  variety  of  diseased  beggar  squats  in  an  ap- 
pealing attitude  against  the  fagades  of  the  more  fashionable  religious 
edifices  during  the  hours  of  general  concourse.  Luxurious  automobiles, 
with  negro  chauffeurs  in  dazzling  white  liveries,  sweep  up  to  the  foot 
of  the  broad  stone  steps  in  as  continual  procession  as  the  narrow  streets 
permit,  but  the  passengers  who  alight  are  overwhelmingly  of  the  gown- 
clad  gender.  Within,  the  perfume  of  the  worshipers  drowns  out  the 
incense.  A  glance  across  the  sea  of  kneeling  figures  discloses  astonish- 


RANDOM  SKETCHES  OF  HAVANA  49 

ingly  few  bare  heads.  The  Cuban  men,  of  course,  are  "  good 
Catholics,"  too,  but  they  are  apt  to  confine  their  church  attendance  to 
special  personal  occasions.  The  church  has  no  such  influence  in  public 
affairs  in  Cuba  as  in  many  parts  of  the  continent  to  the  southward ;  so 
little  indeed,  that  public  religious  processions  are  forbidden  by  law, 
though  sometimes  permitted  in  practice.  If  the  Jesuits  are  still  a 
power  to  be  reckoned  with,  so  are  los  masones,  and  the  mere  proof  of 
irreligion  is  no  effective  bar  to  governmental  or  commercial  preferment. 

A  deaf  person  would  probably  enjoy  Havana  far  more  than  those  of 
acute  hearing.  I  have  often  wondered  why  nature  did  not  provide  us 
with  earlids  as  well  as  eyelids.  A  mere  oversight,  no  doubt,  that  would 
not  have  been  made  had  the  Cuban  capital  existed  when  the  first  models 
of  the  human  being  were  submitted.  Havana  may  not  hold  the  noise 
championship  of  the  world,  but  at  least  little  old  New  York  is  silent 
by  comparison.  Unmufrled  automobiles  beyond  computation,  tram- 
cars  that  seem  far  more  interested  in  producing  clamor  than  speed, 
bellowing  venders  of  everything  vendible,  are  but  the  background  of  an 
unbroken  uproar  that  permeates  to  every  nook  and  cranny  of  the  city. 
Honest  hotel-keepers  tell  you  frankly  that  they  can  offer  every  comfort 
except  quiet.  Even  in  church  you  hear  little  but  the  tumult  outside, 
broken  only  at  rare  intervals  by  the  droning  voice  of  the  preacher.  It 
is  not  simply  the  day-time  uproar  of  business  hours ;  it  increases 
steadily  from  nightfall  until  dawn.  In  olden  days  the  sereno,  with  his 
dark  lantern,  his  pike,  pistol,  bunch  of  keys,  whistle,  and  rope,  wandered 
through  the  streets  calling  out  the  time  and  the  state  of  the  weather 
every  half-hour.  His  efforts  would  be  wasted  nowadays.  The  long- 
seasoned  inhabitants  seem  to  have  grown  callous  to  the  constant  turbu- 
lence ;  I  have  yet  to  meet  a  newcomer  who  confesses  to  an  unbroken 
hour  of  sleep.  If  you  move  out  to  one  of  the  pensions  of  Vedado,  the 
household  itself  will  keep  you  constantly  reminded  that  you  are  still 
in  Havana.  The  Cubans  themselves  seem  to  thrive  on  noise.  If  they 
are  so  unfortunate  as  to  be  denied  their  beloved  din,  they  lose  no  time 
in  producing  another  from  their  own  throats.  After  a  week  in  Havana 
we  took  a  ferry  across  the  harbor  and  strolled  along  the  plain  behind 
Cabana  Fortress.  For  some  time  we  were  aware  of  an  indefinable 
sensation  of  strangeness  amounting  almost  to  discomfort.  We  had 
covered  a  mile  or  so  more  before  we  suddenly  discovered  that  it  was 
due  to  the  unaccustomed  silence. 


CHAPTER  III 

CUBA    FROM    WEST   TO   EAST 

STEAMERS  to  Havana  land  the  traveler  within  a  block  or  two 
of  the  central  railway  station,  so  that,  if  the  capital  has  no  fas- 
cination for  him,  there  lies  at  hand  more  than  four  thousand 
kilometers  of  track  to  put  him  in  touch  with  almost  any  point  of  the 
island.  The  most  feasible  way  of  visiting  the  interior  of  Cuba  is  by 
rail,  unless  one  has  the  time  and  inclination  to  do  it  on  foot.  Auto- 
mobiles are  all  very  well  in  the  vicinity  of  Havana,  but  the  Cuban, 
like  most  Latin-Americans,  is  distinctly  not  a  road  builder,  and  there  are 
long  stretches  of  the  island  where  only  the  single-footing  native  horses 
can  unquestionably  make  their  way.  There  is  occasional  steamer 
service  along  the  coasts,  and  with  few  exceptions  the  important  towns 
are  on  the  sea,  but  even  to  visit  all  these  is  scarcely  seeing  Cuba. 

The  railroads  are  several  in  number  and  as  well  equipped  as  our 
second-class  lines.  One  ventures  as  far  west  as  Guane ;  there  is  a  rather 
thorough  network  in  the  region  nearest  the  capital ;  or  the  traveler 
may  enter  his  sleeping-car  at  Havana  and,  if  nothing  happens,  land  at 
Santiago  in  the  distant  "  Oriente  "  some  thirty-six  hours  later.  Un- 
fortunately something  usually  happens.  The  ferry  from  Key  West 
brings  not  only  passengers,  but  whole  freight  trains,  and  among  the 
curious  sights  of  Cuba  are  box-cars  from  as  far  off  as  the  State  of 
Washington  basking  in  the  tropical  sunshine  or  the  shade  of  royal 
palms  hundreds  of  miles  east  of  Havana.  First-class  fares  are  higher 
than  those  of  our  own  land,  but  some  eighty  per  cent,  of  the  traveling 
public  content  themselves  with  the  hard  wooden  benches  of  what,  in 
spite  of  the  absence  of  an  intervening  second,  are  quite  properly  called 
third-class.  Freight  rates  are  said  to  average  five  times  those  in  the 
United  States.  Women  of  the  better  class  are  almost  as  rarely  seen 
on  the  trains  as  on  the  streets  of  Havana,  with  the  result  that  the  few 
first-class  coaches  are  sometimes  exclusively  filled  with  men,  and 
all  cars  are  smoking-cars. 

There  are  sights  and  incidents  of  interests  even  in  the  more  com- 
monplace first-class  coaches.  In  the  November  season,  when  the  mills 

50 


CUBA  FROM  WEST  TO  EAST          51 

of  the  island  begin  their  grinding,  they  carry  many  Americans  on  their 
way  back  to  the  sugar  estates,  most  of  them  of  the  highly  skilled  labor 
class  in  speech  and  point  of  view.  Now  and  again  a  well-dressed  na- 
tive shares  his  seat  with  his  fighting-cock,  dropping  about  the  bird's 
feet  the  sack  in  which  the  rules  of  the  company  require  it  to  be  car- 
ried and  occasionally  giving  it  a  drink  at  the  passengers'  water-tank. 
At  frequent  intervals  the  gamester  shrilly  challenges  the  world  at  large ; 
travelers  by  Pullman  have  been  known  to  spend  sleepless  nights  be- 
cause of  a  crowing  rooster  in  the  next  berth.  Train-guards  in  the  uni- 
form of  American  soldiers,  an  "  O.  P."  on  their  collars  —  this  being  the 
abbreviation  of  the  Spanish  words  for  "  Public  Order  " —  armed  with 
rifle,  revolver,  and  a  long  sword  with  an  eagle's-head  hilt  in  the  beak 
of  which  is  held  the  retaining  strap,  strut  back  and  forth  through  the 
train,  usually  in  pairs.  Most  of  them  are  well-behaved  youths,  though 
the  wide-spread  corps  on  which  the  government  largely  depends  to 
overawe  its  revolutionarily  inclined  political  opponents  is  not  wholly 
free  from  rowdies.  The  trainboy  and  the  brakemen  have  the  same 
gift  of  incomprehensible  language  as  our  own,  and  only  a  difference  in 
uniform  serves  in  most  cases  to  distinguish  the  name  of  the  next  sta- 
tion from  that  of  some  native  fruit  offered  for  sale.  The  wares  of 
the  Cuban  train  vender  are  more  varied  than  in  our  own  circumspect 
land.  Not  only  can  he  furnish  the  bottles  that  cheer,  in  any  quantity 
and  degree  of  strength,  but  also  lottery  tickets,  cooked  food,  and 
oranges  deftly  pared  like  an  apple,  in  the  native  fashion.  There  is 
probably  no  fruit  on  earth  which  varies  so  much  in  its  form  of  con- 
sumption in  different  countries  as  the  orange. 

But  it  is  in  third-class  that  one  may  find  a  veritable  riot  of  color. 
Types  and  complexions  of  every  degree  known  to  the  human  race 
crowd  the  less  comfortable  coaches.  There  are  leather-faced  Span- 
iards returning  for  the  zafra,  fresh,  boyish  faces  of  similar  origin  and 
destination,  Basques  in  their  boinas  and  corduroy  clothes,  untamed- 
looking  Haitians  sputtering  their  uncouth  tongue,  more  merry  negroes 
from!  the  British  West  Indies,  Chinamen  and  half -Chinamen,  Cuban 
countrymen  in  a  combination  shirt  and  blouse  called  a  chamarreta,  men 
carrying  roosters  under  their  arms,  men  with  hunting  dogs,  negro  girls 
in  purple  and  other  screaming  colors,  including  furs  dyed  in  tints 
unknown  to  the  animal  world,  and  a  scattering  of  Oriental  and  purely 
Caucasian  features  from  the  opposite  ends  of  the  earth.  Perhaps  one 
third  of  the  throng  would  come  under  the  classification  of  "  niggers  " 
in  our  "  Jim  Crow "  States ;  Southerners  would  be,  and  sometimes 


52  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

are,  horrified  to  see  the  blackest  and  the  whitest  race  sharing  the  same 
seat  and  even  engaged,  perhaps,  in  animated  conversation.  In  a 
corner  sits,  more  likely  than  not,  an  enormous  negro  woman  with  a 
big  black  cigar  protruding  from  her  massive  lips  at  an  aggressive 
angle  and  a  brood  of  piccaninnies  peering  out  from  beneath  her  vol- 
uminous skirts  like  chicks  sheltered  from  rain  by  the  mother  hen.  All 
the  gamut  of  sophistication  is  there,  from  the  guajiro,  or  Cuban  peas- 
ant, of  forty  who  is  taking  his  first  train-ride  and  is  waiting  in  secret 
terror  for  the  first  station,  that  he  may  drop  off  and  walk  home,  to 
others  as  blase  as  the  entirely  respectable,  cosmopolitan,  uninteresting 
travelers  in  the  chair-car  and  Pullmans  behind. 

There  are  express  trains  in  Cuba,  those  that  make  the  long  journey 
between  the  two  principal  cities  sometimes  so  heavy  with  their  half 
dozen  third,  their  one  or  two  first-class,  their  Pullman,  baggage,  ex- 
press, and  mail-cars,  that  it  is  small  wonder  the  single  engine  can  keep 
abreast  of  the  time-table  even  when  washouts  or  slippery,  grass-brown 
rails  do  not  add  to  its  troubles.  Section-gangs  are  conspicuous  by 
their  scarcity,  and  those  who  contract  to  keep  the  tracks  clear  of  vege- 
tation by  a  monthly  sprinkling  of  chemicals  do  not  always  accomplish 
their  task.  But  there  is  nothing  more  comfortable  than  loafing  along 
in  the  wicker  chairs  to  be  found  in  one  uncrovvded  end  of  the  first- 
class  coach,  without  extra  charge,  with  the  immense  car-windows  wide 
open,  far  enough  back  to  miss  the  inevitable  cinders,  through  the  per- 
petual, palm-tree-studded  summer  of  the  tropics.  Even  the  expresses 
are,  perhaps  unintentionally,  sight-seeing  trains,  though  they  are  fre- 
quently more  or  less  exasperating  to  the  hurried  business  man.  But, 
then,  one  has  no  right  to  be  a  hurried  business  man  in  the  West  In- 
dies. 

The  slower  majority  of  trains  dally  at  each  station,  according  to 
its  size,  just  about  long  enough  to  "give  the  town  the  once  over"; 
or,  if  it  is  large  enough  to  be  worth  a  longer  visit,  one  is  almost  certain 
to  catch  the  next  train  if  he  sets  out  for  the  station  as  soon  as  it  arrives. 
The  scene  at  a  Cuban  railway  station  is  always  interesting.  Except 
in  the  largest  towns,  most  of  the  population  comes  down  to  see  the  train 
go  through,  so  that  the  platform  is  crowded  half  an  hour  before  it  is 
due,  which  usually  means  an  hour  or  two  before  it  actually  arrives. 
The  new-comer  is  apt  to  conclude  that  he  has  little  chance  of  getting  a 
seat,  but  he  soon  learns  by  experience  that  few  of  these  platform 
loungers  are  actual  travelers.  The  average  station  crowd  is  distinctly 


CUBA  FROM  WEST  TO  EAST  53 

African  in  complexion,  though  perhaps  a  majority  show  a  greater 
or  less  percentage  of  European  ancestry.  Pompous  black  dames  in 
gaudy  dresses,  newly  ironed  and  starched,  with  big  brass  ear-rings  and 
huge  combs  in  their  frizzled  tresses,  their  fingers  heavy  with  a  dozen 
cheap  rings,  stand  coyly  smoking  their  long  black  cigars.  A  man  with 
his  best  rooster  under  one  arm  and  his  best  girl  on  the  other  stalks 
haughtily  to  and  fro  among  his  rivals  and  admirers.  An  excited  negro 
with  a  gamecock  in  one  hand  waves  it  wildly  in  the  air  as  he  argues, 
or  tucks  it  under  an  armpit  while  he  wrestles  with  his  baggage.  A 
colored  girl  in  robin's-egg  blue  madly  powders  her  nose  in  a  corner, 
using  a  pocket  mirror  of  the  size  of  a  cabinet  photograph.  Guajiros 
in  chamarretas  with  stiffly  starched  white  bosoms  which  give  them  a 
resemblance  to  dress  shirts  that  have  not  been  tucked  into  the  trousers, 
a  big  knife  in  a  sheath  half  showing  below  them,  the  trousers  them- 
selves white,  or  faintly  pink,  or  cream-colored,  even  of  gay  plaids  in 
the  more  African  cases,  their  heads  covered  with  immense  straw  hats 
and  their  feet  with  noiseless  al par  gat  as,  gaze  about  them  with  the  won- 
dering air  of  peasants  the  world  over.  Rural  guards  of  the  "  O.  P." 
strut  hither  and  yon,  making  a  great  show  of  force  both  in  nun^°rs 
and  weapons.  Children  of  all  ages  add  their  falsetto  to  the  constant 
hubbub  of  chatter.  Here  zr<\  there  a  worn-out  oid  Chinaman  wanders 
about  offering  dulces  for  sale.  A  n^gro  crone  engaged  in  that  unsavory 
occupation  technically  known  as  "  shooting  snipes  "  picks  up  an  aban- 
doned cigar  or  cigarette  butt  here  and  there,  lighting  it  from  the  rem- 
nant of  another  and  dropping  that  into  a  pocket.  The  first-class  wait- 
ing-room is  crowded,  but  the  departure  of  the  train  will  prove  that  most 
of  the  occupants  have  come  merely  to  snow  off  their  finery  or  examine 
that  of  their  neighbors.  A  white-haired  old  negro  man  wiieels  back  and 
forth  in  the  bit  of  space  left  to  him  a  white  baby  resplendent  with  pink 
ribbons.  When  the  train  creaks  in  at  last,  would-be  baggage  carriers 
swarm  into  the  coaches  or  about  departing  travelers  like  aggressive 
mosquitoes.  The  racial  disorderliness  of  Latin-Americans,  and  their 
abhorrence  of  carrying  their  own  bags,  make  this  latter  nuisance  uni- 
versal throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  island.  It  is  of  no 
use  for  the  American  traveler  to  assert  his  own  ability  to  bear  his 
burdens ;  no  one  believes  him,  and  they  are  sure  to  be  snatched  out  of 
his  hands  by  some  officious  ragamuffin  before  he  can  escape  from  the 
maelstrom.  In  some  stations  a  massive,  self-assertive  negro  woman 
"  contracts  "  to  see  all  hand  baggage  on  or  off  the  trains,  keeping  all 


54  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

the  rabble  of  ragged  men  and  boys,  some  of  them  pure  white,  in  her  em- 
ploy and  collecting  the  gratuities  herself  in  a  final  promenade  through 
the  cars. 

Sometimes  the  train  stops  for  a  station  meal,  the  mere  buffet  service 
on  board  being  uncertain  and  insufficient.  Then  it  is  every  one  for 
himself  and  hunger  catch  the  hindmost,  for  one  has  small  chance  of 
attracting  the  attention  of  the  overworked  concessionary  if  the  heaping 
platters  with  which  the  common  table  is  crowded  are  empty  before  he 
can  lay  hand  upon  them.  Then  he  must  trust  to  the  old  Chinamen 
who  patiently  stand  all  day  along  the  edge  of  the  platform,  or  even 
well  into  the  night,  slinking  off  into  the  darkness  with  their  lantern- 
lighted  boxes  of  sweets  and  biscuits  only  when  the  last  train  has  rumbled 
away  to  the  east  or  west. 

We  were  invited  to  spend  a  Sunday  at  a  big  tobacco  finca  in  the 
heart  of  the  far-famed  Vuelta  Abajo  district  in  Cuba's  westernmost 
province.  With  the  exception  of  Guanajay  the  few  towns  between 
Havana  and  Pinar  del  Rio,  capital  of  the  province  of  the  same  name, 
ha^  little  importance.  The  passing  impression  is  of  rich  red  mud, 
a  glaring  sunshine,  and  a  wide  difference  between  the  rather  foppish, 
over-dressed  Havant^  and  the  uncouth  countrymen  in  their  bohios, 
huts  of  palm-leaves  and  thatch  which  probably  still  bear  a  close  re- 
semblance to  those  in  which  Columbus  found  the  aborigines  living. 
Then  there  are  of  course  the  royal  palms,  which  grow  everywhere  in 
Cuba  in  even  greater  profusion  than  in  Brazil.  The  roads  are  bord- 
ered with  them,  the  fields  are  striped  with  their  silvery  white  trunks, 
their  rrtajestic  fronds  give  the  'mishing  touch  .o  every  landscape. 

Pinar  del  Rio  itself  has  the  same  baking-hot,  glaring,  dusty  aspect 
of  almost  all  towns  of  the  interior  in  the  dry  season,  the  same  curious 
contrasts  of  snorting  automobiles  and  guajiros  peddling  their  milk  on 
horseback,  the  cans  in  burlap  or  leaf -woven  saddlebags  beneath  their 
crossed  or  dangling  legs.  Beyond,  the  mixto  wanders  along  at  a  jog 
trot,  now  and  then  stopping  for  a  drink  or  to  urge  a  belligerent  bull 
off  the  track.  Here  a  peasant  picks  his  way  carefully  down  the  car 
steps,  carrying  by  a  string  looped  over  one  calloused  finger  two  lordly 
peacocks  craning  their  plumed  heads  from  the  tight  palm-leaf  wrap- 
pings in  which  their  bodies  are  concealed ;  there  a  family  climbs  aboard 
with  a  black  nursegirl  of  ten,  whose  saucer  eyes  as  she  points  and  ex- 
claims at  what  no  doubt  seems  to  her  the  swiftly  fleeing  landscape 
show  that  she  has  never  before  been  on  a  train.  Tobacco  is  grown 


CUBA  FROM  WEST  TO  EAST          55 

in  scattered  sections  all  over  Cuba,  but  it  is  most  at  home  in  the  gently 
rolling  heart  of  this  western  province.  Being  Sunday,  there  was  little 
work  going  on  in  the  fields,  but  when  we  passed  this  way  two  days 
later  we  found  them  everywhere  being  plowed  with  oxen,  birds  fol- 
lowing close  on  the  heels  of  the  plowmen  to  pick  up  the  bugs  and 
worms,  women  and  children  as  well  as  men  transplanting  the  bed- 
grown  seedlings  of  the  size  of  radish  tops.  Time  was  when  the  nar- 
cotic weed  had  all  this  region  to  itself,  but  the  lordly  sugar-cane  is 
steadily  encroaching  upon  it  now,  daring  to  grow  in  the  very  shadow 
of  the  old,  brown,  leaf-built  tobacco  barns. 

Don  Jacinto  himself  did  not  meet  us  at  the  train,  but  his  giant  of  a 
son  greeted  us  with  an  elaborate  Castilian  courtesy  which  seemed  cu- 
riously out  of  keeping  with  his  fluent  English,  interlarded  with  Ameri- 
can college  slang.  How  he  managed  to  cramp  himself  into  the  driving 
seat  of  the  bespattered  Ford  was  as  much  of  a  mystery  as  the  apparent 
ease  with  which  it  skimmed  along  the  bottomless  Cuban  country  road 
or  swam  the  bridgeless  river.  I  noted  that  it  bore  no  license  tag  and, 
perhaps  unwisely,  expressed  my  surprise  aloud,  for  Don  Jacinto's  son 
smiled  quizzically  and  for  some  time  made  no  other  answer.  Then 
he  explained,  "  Those  of  us  who  are  old  residents  and  large  property 
holders  in  our  communities  do  not  bother  to  take  out  licenses ;  besides, 
they  are  only  five  dollars  here  in  the  country,  so  it  is  hardly  worth 
the  trouble." 

Our  host,  a  lordly-mannered  old  Spaniard  who  had  come  to  Cuba 
in  his  early  youth,  received  us  on  the  broad,  breeze-swept  veranda  of 
his  dwelling.  It  was  a  typical  Spanish  country  house  of  the  tropics, 
low  and  of  a  single  story,  yet  capacious,  rambling  back  through  a 
large,  wide-open  parlor,  a  dining-room  almost  as  extensive,  and  a 
cobbled  patio  to  a  smoke-blackened  kitchen  and  the  quarters  of  the 
dozen  black  domestics  who  were  tending  the  pots  or  responding  with 
alacrity  to  the  slightest  hint  of  a  summons  from  Don  Jacinto  or  his 
equally  imperious  son.  The  living  rooms  flanked  the  two  larger  cham- 
bers, and  were  as  tightly  closed  as  the  latter  were  wide  open.  The 
guest  room  opening  directly  off  the  parlor  contained  all  the  conveni- 
ences that  American  influence  has  brought  to  Cuba,  without  losing 
a  bit  of  its  Castilian  architecture.  There  were  of  course  neither 
carpets  nor  rugs  in  the  house,  bare  wooden  floors  being  not  only  cooler, 
but  less  inviting  to  the  inevitable  insects  of  the  tropics.  A  score  of 
cane  rocking-chairs,  the  same  round  rattan  which  formed  the  rockers 
curving  upward  and  backward  to  give  the  chair  its  arms,  and  a  bare 


56  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

table,  constituted  the  entire  furniture  of  the  parlor.  On  the  unpapered 
wooden  walls  hung  two  framed  portraits  and  a  large  calendar.  Boxes 
of  cigars  lay  invitingly  open  in  all  the  three  rooms  we  entered  and 
another  decorated  the  table  on  the  cement-paved  veranda. 

This  last  was  the  principal  rendezvous  of  the  household.  There 
a  peon  dumped  a  small  cartload  of  mail,  made  up  largely  of  technical 
periodicals ;  there  the  servants  and  the  overseers  came  to  receive  or- 
ders. The  demeanor  of  the  inferiors  before  their  masters  was  in  per- 
fect keeping  with  the  patriarchal  atmosphere  of  the  entire  finca. 
Thus,  one  easily  imagined,  plantation  owners  commanded  and  servants 
unquestionably  obeyed  in  the  days  of  slavery.  There  was  a  certain 
comradeship,  one  might  almost  say  democracy,  between  the  two,  or 
the  several,  social  grades,  but  it  was  not  one  which  carried  with  it  the 
slightest  suggestion  of  familiarity  on  either  side. 

Luncheon  was  a  ceremonious  affair.  Rachel,  being  the  only  lady 
present,  was  given  the  head  of  the  table,  with  Don  Jacinto  on  her 
right.  In  theory  the  ladies  of  the  household  were  indisposed,  but  it 
was  probably  only  the  presence  of  strangers,  particularly  a  male 
stranger,  which  kept  them  from  appearing,  if  only  in  bata  and  curl- 
papers. Below  our  host  and  myself,  on  opposite  sides,  the  company 
was  ranged  down  the  table  in  careful  gradations  of  social  standing, 
empty  chairs  separating  those  who  were  too  widely  different  in  rank 
to  touch  elbows.  Thus  there  was  a  vacant  chair  between  the  son  of 
the  house  and  the  head  overseer  and,  farther  down,  two  of  them 
separated  the  company  chemist  from  a  sort  of  field  boss.  Conversa- 
tion was  similarly  graded.  The  chief  overseer  did  not  hesitate  to 
put  in  a  word  or  even  tell  an  anecdote  whenever  guests,  father  or  son 
were  not  speaking;  the  chemist  now  and  then  ventured  a  remark  of 
his  own,  but  the  field  boss  ate  in  utter  silence  except  when  some  ques- 
tion from  the  top  of  the  table  brought  from  him  a  respectful  mono- 
syllablic  reply.  Of  the  food  served  on  one  mammoth  platter  after 
another  I  will  say  nothing  beyond  remarking  that  two  thirds  of  it  was 
meat,  all  of  it  well  cooked,  and  the  quantity  so  great  that  the  whole  as- 
sembled company  scarcely  made  a  noticeable  impression  upon  it.  Over 
the  table  hung  an  immense  cloth  fan  like  the  punkahs  of  India,  oper- 
ated in  the  same  manner  by  a  boy  incessantly  pulling  at  a  rope  over 
a  pulley  in  the  far  end  of  the  room.  Its  purpose,  however,,  was  dif- 
ferent, as  was  indicated  by  its  name,  espanto-nwscas  (scare-flies),  for 
Cuba's  unfailing  breeze  would  have  sufficed  to  keep  the  air  cool ; 
but  when  the  wallah  suddenly  abandoned  his  task  with  the  appearance 


CUBA  FROM  WEST  TO  EAST  57 

of  the  coffee  the  flies  quickly  settled  down  upon  us  in  a  veritable  cloud. 
It  may  be  that  the  tobacco  fields  attract  them,  for  they  are  ordinarily 
far  less  troublesome  in  the  West  Indies  than  during  our  own  sum- 
mers. 

November  being  merely  planting  time  the  finca  presented  a  bare  ap- 
pearance compared  with  what  it  would  be  in  March,  when  the  tall 
tobacco  plants  wave  everywhere  in  the  breeze.  Behind  the  house  was 
a  dovecote  which  suggested  some  immense  New  York  apartment  house, 
so  many  were  its  several-storied  compartments.  A  handful  of  corn 
brought  a  fluttering  gray  and  white  cloud  which  almost  obscured  the 
sun.  Pigeons  and  chickens  are  kept  in  large  numbers  in  the  tobacco 
fields  to  follow  the  plows  and  eat  the  insects  which  would  otherwise 
destroy  the  seeds  and  the  young  plants.  The  supply  barn  was  the 
chief  center  of  industry  at  this  season,  with  its  plows  and  watering- 
pots  marshaled  in  long  rows,  its  tons  of  fertilizer  in  sacks,  its  cords  of 
baled  cheese-cloth,  its  bags  of  tobacco  seed,  so  microscopic  in  size  that 
it  takes  four  hundred  thousand  of  them  to  weigh  an  ounce.  The  seed- 
beds were  at  some  distance.  There  the  seed  is  sowed  like  wheat  and 
the  plants  grow  as  compactly  as  grass  on  a  lawn  until  they  are  about 
twenty  days  old,  when  they  are  transferred  to  the  larger  fields  and 
given  room  to  expand  almost  to  man's  height.  For  acres  upon  acres 
the  rolling  landscape  stood  forested  with  poles  on  which  the  cheese- 
cloth would  be  hung  a  few  weeks  later,  the  vista  recalling  the  hop-fields 
of  Bavaria  in  the  spring-time.  The  idea  of  growing  "  wrapper  "  to- 
bacco in  the  shade,  in  order  to  keep  the  leaves  silky  and  of  uniform 
color,  is  said  to  have  originated  in  the  United  States  and  to  have  made 
its  way  but  slowly  in  Cuba,  where  planters  long  considered  a  maximum 
of  sunshine  requisite  to  the  best  quality.  To-day  it  is  in  general  vogue 
throughout  the  island. 

We  whiled  away  the  afternoon  on  the  breezy  veranda,  where  the  more 
important  employees,  of  the  finca  and  men  from  the  neighboring  town 
came  to  discuss  the  crop,  to  say  nothing  of  helping  themselves  to  the 
cigars  which  lay  everywhere  within  easy  reach.  There  was  some- 
thing delightfully  Old  World  about  the  simplicity  of  this  patriarchal 
family  life,  perhaps  because  it  had  scarcely  a  hint  of  Americanism 
and  its  concomitant  commercial  bustle.  Among  the  visitors  was  a 
lottery  vender  on  horseback,  who  sold  Don  Jacinto  and  his  son  their 
customary  half  dozen  "  strips,"  these  being  sheets  of  twenty  or  thirty 
"  pieces "  of  the  same  number.  The  company  doctor  parted  with 
thirty  dollars  for  a  "  whole  ticket."  Each  had  his  own  little  scheme 


58 

for  choosing  the  numbers,  one  refusing  those  in  which  the  same  figure 
was  repeated,  another  insisting  that  the  total  of  the  added  figures 
should  be  divisible  by  three,  some  depending  on  dreams  or  fantastic 
combinations  of  figures  they  had  seen  or  heard  spoken  during  the  day. 
The  workmen  on  the  estate,  as  on  every  one  in  Cuba,  were  inveterate 
gamblers.  Not  only  did  they  buy  as  many  "  pieces  "  each  week  as 
they  could  pay  for,  but  they  all  "  played  terminals,"  that  is,  formed 
pools  which  were  won  by  the  man  guessing  correctly  the  last  two 
numbers  of  the  week's  winning  ticket. 

We  visited  tobacco  estates  in  other  parts  of  Cuba  and  saw  all  the 
process  except  the  cutting  and  curing  before  we  left  the  island.  At 
Zaza  del  Medio,  for  instance,  whole  carloads  of  small  plants  are 
handled  during  November.  They  are  very  hardy,  living  for  three  or 
four  days  after  being  pulled  up  by  the  roots  from  the  seed-beds. 
Strewn  out  on  the  station  platform  in  little  leaf -tied  bundles,  they  were 
counted  bunch  by  bunch  and  tossed  into  plaited  straw  saddlebags,  to 
be  transported  by  pack-animals  to  fields  sometimes  more  than  a  day's 
journey  distant.  Surrounded  on  all  sides  by  horizonless  seas  of  sugar- 
cane, the  Zaza  del  Medio  region  is  conspicuous  twenty  miles  off  by  its 
tobacco  color,  not  of  course  of  the  plants,  but  of  the  rich  brown  of 
plowed  fields  and  the  aged  thatch-built  tobacco  barns.  We  rode  that 
way  one  day,  our  horses  floundering  through  mammoth  mud-holes, 
stepping  gingerly  through  masses  of  thorny  aroma,  and  fording  saddle- 
deep  the  Zaza  River.  Here  the  small  planter  system,  as  distinctive 
from  the  big  administrative  estates  of  Vuelto  Abajo,  is  in  vogue. 
Wre  found  lazy  oxen  swinging  along  as  if  in  time  to  a  wedding  march, 
dragging  behind  them  crude  wooden  plows  protected  by  an  iron  point. 
A  boy  followed  each  of  them,  dropping  a  withered  small  plant  at 
regular  intervals,  a  man,  or  sometimes  a  woman,  setting  them  up 
behind  him.  Immense  barns  made  of  a  pole  frame-work  covered  en- 
tirely with  brown  and  shaggy  guinea-grass  bulked  forth  against  the 
palm-tree-punctuated  horizon.  The  similarly  constructed  houses  of  the 
planters  were  minute  by  comparison.  Here,  they  told  us,  tobacco 
grows  only  waist  high,  in  contrast  to  the  six  feet  it  sometimes  attains  in 
Pinar  del  Rio  province.  In  February  or  March  the  plants  are  cut  off 
at  the  base  and  strung  on  the  poles  which  lie  heaped  in  immense  piles, 
and  hung  for  two  months  in  the  airy  barns.  Then  they  are  wrapped 
in  yagua  and  carried  back  to  the  railroad  on  pack-animals.  Yagua,  by 
the  way,  which  is  constantly  intruding  upon  any  description  of  the 
West  Indies,  where  it  is  put  to  a  great  variety  of  uses,  is  the  base  of 


CUBA  FROM  WEST  TO  EAST          59 

the  leaf  of  the  royal  palm,  the  lower  one  of  which  drops  off  regularly 
about  once  a  month.  It  is  pliable  and  durable  as  leather,  which  it  re- 
sembles in  appearance,  though  it  is  several  times  thicker,  and  a  single 
leaf  supplies  a  strip  a  yard  long  and  half  as  wide. 

Rivals,  especially  Jamaica,  assert  that  the  famous  tobacco  vegas  of 
Cuba  are  worn  out  and  that  Cuban  tobacco  is  now  living  on  its  reputa- 
tion. The  statement  is  scarcely  borne  out  by  the  aroma  of  the  cigars 
sold  by  every  shop-keeper  on  the  island,  though  to  tell  the  truth  they 
do  not  equal  the  "  Habana  "  as  we  know  it  in  the  North.  This  is  pos- 
sibly due  to  the  humidity  of  the  climate.  The  new-comer  is  surprised 
to  find  how  cavalierly  the  Cuban  treats  his  cigars,  or  tobacos,  as  he  calls 
them.  Even  though  he  squanders  dos  reales  each  for  them  he  thrusts 
a  handful  loosely  into  an  outside  coat  pocket,  as  if  they  were  so  many 
strips  of  wood.  For  they  are  so  damp  and  pliable  in  the  humid  Cuban 
atmosphere  that  they  will  endure  an  astonishing  amount  of  mistreat- 
ment without  coming  to  grief.  Contrary  to  the  assertions  of  Dame 
Rumor,  Cubans  do  not  smoke  cigarettes  only ;  perhaps  the  majority,  of 
the  countrymen  at  least,  confine  themselves  to  cigars. 

There  are  cigar-makers  in  every  town  of  Cuba,  though  Havana 
almost  monopolizes  the  export  trade.  How  long  some  of  the  famous 
factories  have  been  in  existence  was  suggested  to  us  by  a  grindstone 
in  the  patio  of  the  one  opposite  the  new  national  palace.  There  the 
workmen  come  to  whet  their  knives  each  morning,  and  they  had  worn 
their  way  completely  through  the  enormous  grindstone  in  several  places 
around  the  edge.  The  methods  in  Havana  cigar  factories  are  of  course 
similar  to  those  of  Cayo  Hueso,  as  Cuba  calls  our  southernmost  city. 
In  one  of  them  we  were  shown  cigars  which  "  wholesale  "  at  fifteen 
hundred  dollars  a  thousand,  though  I  got  no  opportunity  of  judging 
whether  or  not  they  were  worth  it,  either  in  tobacco  or  ostentation, 
The  stems  of  the  tobacco  leaves  are  shipped  to  New  York  and  made 
into  snuff.  An  average  wage  for  the  cigar  makers  was  said  to  be  five 
dollars  a  day.  They  each  paid  that  many  cents  a  week  to  the  factory 
reader,  who  entertains  the  male  workmen  with  the  daily  newspapers, 
and  the  women,  by  their  own  choice  of  course,  with  the  most  sentimental 
of  novels.  Girls  will  be  girls  the  world  over. 

The  dreadful  habit  of  using  tobacco  has  progressed  since  the  day 
when  Columbus  discovered  the  aborigines  of  the  great  island  of  Cuba- 
nacan  smoking,  not  Habana  cigars,  but  by  using  a  forked  reed  two  ends 
of  which  they  put  in  their  nostrils  and  the  other  in  a  heap  of  burning 
tobacco  leaves. 


6o  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

Neither  space  nor  the  reader's  patience  would  hold  out  if  I  attempted 
to  do  more  than  "  hit  the  high  spots  "  of  our  two  months  of  journeying 
to  and  fro  in  Cuba.  There  is  room  for  a  year  of  constant  sight-seeing 
and  material  for  a  fat  volume  in  the  largest  of  the  West  Indies,  though 
to  tell  the  truth  there  is  a  certain  sameness  of  climate,  landscape,  town, 
and  character  which  might  make  that  long  a  stay  monotonous  despite 
the  glories  of  at  least  the  first  two  of  these.  While  he  lacks  something 
of  that  open  frankness  of  intercourse  which  we  are  wont  to  think 
reaches  its  height  in  our  own  free  and  easy  land,  and  the  exclusiveness 
of  his  family  life  puts  him  at  a  disadvantage  as  an  entertainer  of  guests, 
the  Cuban  himself,  particularly  outside  the  larger  cities,  is  not  inhospi- 
table. But  his  welcome  of  visitors  from  the  North  is  overshadowed 
by  the  unbounded  hospitality  of  the  American  residents  of  Cuba, 
whether  on  the  great  sugar  estates,  the  fruit  farms,  in  the  scattered 
enterprises  of  varied  nature  in  all  corners  of  the  island,  or  in  the  many 
cities  that  have  become  their  homes.  Merely  to  enumerate  the  un- 
expected welcomes  we  met  with  from  our  own  people  in  all  parts  of  the 
island  would  be  to  fill  many  pages. 

The  cities,  on  the  whole,  are  the  least  pleasant  of  Cuba's  attractions. 
Their  hotels,  and  those  places  with  which  the  traveler  is  most  likely  to 
come  in  contact,  are  largely  given  over  to  the  insular  sport  of  tourist- 
baiting  even  before  midwinter  brings  its  plethora  of  cold-fleeing,  race- 
track-following, or  prohibition-abhorring  visitors  from  the  North. 
Havana,  I  take  it,  would  be  the  last  place  in  the  world  for  the  lover  of 
the  simplicities  of  life,  as  for  the  man  of  modest  income,  in  those  winter 
months  when  its  hotels  turn  away  whole  droves  of  would-be  guests  and 
its  already  exorbitant  prices  climb  far  out  of  sight  from  the  topmost 
rung  of  the  ladder  of  reason.  Incidentally  Cuba  is  in  the  throes  of 
what  might  be  called  a  "  sugar  vs.  tourists  "  controversy.  Its  merchants 
would  like  to  draw  as  many  visitors  as  possible,  but  even  its  tourist 
bureau  sees  itself  obliged  to  "  soft  pedal "  its  appeals.  If  still  more 
visitors  come,  where  is  the  island  to  house  them?  Time  was  when  her 
more  expensive  hotels,  especially  of  Havana,  stood  well  nigh  empty 
through  the  summer  and  welcomed  the  first  refugees  from  Jack  Frost 
with  open  arms,  or  at  least  doors.  It  is  not  so  to-day.  Sugar  planters 
from  the  interior,  who  would  once  have  grumbled  at  paying  a  dollar 
for  a  night's  lodging  in  a  back  street  fonda,  now  demand  the  most 
luxurious  suites  facing  the  plaza  and  the  Prado,  nay,  even  house  their 
families  in  them  for  months  at  a  time,  to  the  dismay  of  foreign  visitors. 
Stevedores  who  were  once  overjoyed  to  earn  two  dollars  a  day  sneer 


CUBA  FROM  WEST  TO  EAST          61 

at  the  fabulous  wages  offered  them  now,  knowing  that  a  bit  of  specula- 
tion in  sugar  stocks  will  bring  them  many  times  the  amount  to  be  had  by 
physical  exertion.  The  advice  most  apropos  to  the  modern  visitor  to 
Cuba  whose  tastes  are  simple  and  whose  fortune  is  limited  would  be, 
perhaps,  to  come  early  and  avoid  the  cities. 

We  found  Pinar  del  Rio  town,  for  instance,  far  less  beguiling  than 
a  journey  we  made  from  it  over  the  mountain  to  the  Matahambre  mines. 
A  peon  met  us  with  native  horses  where  the  hired  Ford  confessed  its 
inability  to  advance  farther.  Along  the  narrow  trail  the  vegetation  was 
dense  and  tropical.  Royal  palms  waved  high  along  the  borders  of  the 
small  streams;  red-trunked  macicos,  yagmmas  with  their  curious  up- 
turned leaves  showing  their  white  backs,  broke  the  almost  monotony 
of  the  greenery.  Here  and  there  we  passed  a  brown  grass  hut  which 
seemed  to  have  grown  up  of  itself,  a  little  patch  of  malanga,  boniato, 
or  yuca,  the  chief  native  tubers,  about  it,  a  dark  woman  paddling  her 
wash  against  the  trunk  of  a  palm-tree  on  the  edge  of  a  water-hole, 
several  babies  in  single  white  garments  or  their  own  little  black  skins 
scurrying  away  into  the  underbrush  as  we  rode  down  upon  them.  A 
few  horsemen  passed  us,  and  a  pack-train  or  two ;  but  only  one  woman 
among  the  score  or  more  we  met  was  mounted.  She  was  a  jet-black 
lady  in  a  bedraggled  skirt  and  a  man's  straw  hat,  who  teetered  perilously 
on  her  uncomfortable  side-saddle,  yet  who  gazed  scornfully  down  her 
shaded  nose  at  Rachel,  riding  far  more  easily  astride.  Finally,  when  the 
sun  was  high  and  the  vegetation  scrubby  and  shadeless,  and  we  had 
climbed  laboriously  up  several  steep,  bare  hillsides  only  to  slide  down 
again  into  another  hollow,  a  cleft  in  the  hills  gave  us  a  sudden  panorama 
of  the  sea,  and  almost  sheer  below  us  lay  spread  out  the  mining  town. 
The  setting  was  barren,  as  is  that  of  most  mines,  though  five  years 
before  it  had  been  covered  with  a  pine  forest,  until  a  cyclone  came  to 
sweep  it  wholly  away  and  leave  only  here  and  there  a  dead,  branchless 
trunk  in  a  reddish  soil  that  gave  every  outer  indication  of  being  sterile. 
A  network  of  red  trails  linked  together  the  offices,  the  shafts  and  the 
reduction  plant,  the  red-roofed  houses  of  the  American  employees,  and 
the  thatched  huts  of  the  mine  workers. 

Mining  is  not  one  of  Cuba's  chief  assets,  but  this  particular  spot 
is  producing  a  high-grade  copper.  Ore  was  discovered  here  by  a  deer 
hunter  wandering  through  the  forest  of  pines,  but  before  he  could 
make  use  of  his  knowledge  the  region  was  "  denounced  "  by  another 
Cuban  and  still  belongs  to  his  family,  though  there  is  some  bitter-worded 
doubt  as  to  which  branch  of  it.  It  goes  without  saying  that  the  manager 


62  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

is  an  energetic  young  American.  The  laborers  are  chiefly  Spaniards, 
for  the  Cubans  are  too  superstitious  to  long  endure  working  under- 
ground. The  company  builds  its  own  roads,  and  has  installed  a  tele- 
graph and  post-office  without  government  aid,  yet  it  pays  full  rates 
on  its  telegrams  or  letters.  We  went  far  down  the  shaft  into  the 
damp  blackness  of  the  eighth  and  tenth  levels,  hundreds  of  feet  below 
the  surface,  following  the  galleries  and  "  stopes  "  to  where  the  workmen 
were  piling  the  bluish  rock  into  the  little  iron  hand-cars,  the  dull  echoing 
thud  of  the  dynamiting  on  some  other  level  sending  a  shudder  through 
the  mountain.  All  night  long  the  mine  worked  tirelessly  on,  the  sus- 
pended ore-cars  swinging  down  their  six-mile  cables  across  the  gorge 
to  the  loading  bins  on  the  edge  of  the  sea. 

We  followed  them  in  a  Ford  next  morning,  from  the  treeless  uplands 
down  through  an  oak-grown  strip  where  half-wild  hogs  fatten  them- 
selves, unwisely,  for  the  plumper  of  them  are  sure  to  grace  native 
boards  during  the  fiesta  of  Noche  Buena,  then  along  a  strip  of  palms  to 
the  Atlantic.  A  launch  scudded  down  the  coast  with  us  to  Esperanza, 
a  long  range  of  mountains,  rounded  in  form,  gashed  with  red  wounds 
here  and  there,  looking  lofty  only  because  they  were  so  near  at  hand, 
seeming  to  keep  pace  with  us  as  if  bent  on  shutting  us  out  of  the  level 
country  behind  them.  After  luncheon  in  the  "  best  hotel,"  with  a  hen 
under  my  chair  and  a  pig  under  Rachel's,  we  Forded  to  Vinales,  the 
road  running  for  miles  under  the  very  lee  of  a  sheer  mountain  wall, 
trees,  especially  of  the  palm  variety,  rising  everywhere  out  of  the 
crevices  of  the  soft  white  rock  and  seeming  to  keep  their  foothold  by 
clutching  the  wall  above  with  their  upper  branches.  Caves  with 
elaborate  stalactite  and  stalagmite  formations  gaped  beneath  them,  until 
we  rounded  the  spur  and  passed  through  a  sort  of  mountain  portal  into 
the  familiar,  rolling,  dense-grown  interior  again. 

We  returned  to  Pinar  del  Rio  by  guagua,  a  four-seated  mail  and 
passenger  auto  bus  such  as  ply  in  many  sections  of  rural  Cuba.  Its 
driver  was  as  wild  as  his  brethren  of  Havana,  and  the  contrivance 
leaped  along  over  the  bad  roads  like  a  frolicsome  goat.  Fortunately  the 
usual  crowd  had  missed  their  ride  that  morning  and  we  could  stretch 
our  legs  at  ease.  Only  a  leathery  old  lady  who  dickered  for  a  reduction 
in  fare,  two  or  three  guajiros  in  their  best  starched  chamarretas,  a 
villager's  shoes  which  were  to  be  resoled,  and  two  turkeys  in  palm-leaf 
cornucopias  made  up  the  passenger  list.  The  shrill  whistle  in  place 
of  a  horn  warned  dawdling  countrymen  to  beware,  for  our  chauffeur 
had  scant  respect  for  his  fellow-mortals. 


CUBA  FROM  WEST  TO  EAST          63 

Of  the  several  towns  which  the  traveler  in  Cuba  is  more  or  less  sure 
to  visit  the  first  is  usually  Matanzas,  both  because  it  is  the  first  place 
of  any  importance  on  the  way  eastward  and  because  it  boasts  two 
natural  phenomena  that  have  been  widely  reported.  The  town  itself, 
wrapped  around  the  head  of  a  deeply  indented  bay,  has  nothing  that 
may  not  be  found  in  a  dozen  other  provincial  towns,  —  unpaved  streets 
reeking  with  mud  or  dust,  according  to  the  weather,  a  cement-floored 
central  plaza  gay  with  tropical  vegetation  and  flanked  by  portales,  or 
massive  arcades,  and  constant  vistas  of  the  more  formal  hours  of  family 
life  through  the  street-toeing  window  grilles.  The  pursuit  of  tourists 
is  among  its  favorite  sports,  and  not  only  are  the  prices  and  accommo- 
dations of  hotels  infinitely  more  attractive  in  the  mouths  of  their  run- 
ners at  the  station  than  at  their  desks,  but  the  entire  town  seems  to  be 
banded  together  in  a  conspiracy  to  force  foreign  visitors  to  hire  auto- 
mobiles. At  least  we  were  forced  to  learn  by  experience  rather  than 
by  inquiry  that  the  street-cars  carry  one  two  thirds  of  the  way  to  either 
of  the  "  sights  "  for  which  the  place  is  noted,  or  that  one  can  stroll 
the  entire  distance  from  the  central  plaza  in  half  an  hour. 

The  Yumuri  valley  is,  to  be  sure,  well  worth  seeing.  From  the  her- 
mitage of  Montserrat,  erected  by  the  Catalans  of  the  island  on  a  slope 
above  the  town,  the  basin-shaped  vale  has  a  serene  beauty,  particularly 
at  sunrise  or  toward  sunset,  which  draws  at  least  a  murmur  of  pleasure 
from  the  beholder.  Royal  palms,  singly  and  in  clumps,  dot  the  whole 
expanse  of  plain  with  their  green  plumes  and  silvery  trunks  and  climb 
the  slopes  of  the  encircling  hills,  which  lie  like  careless  grass-grown 
heaps  of  cracked  stone  along  the  horizon.  Even  by  day  the  silence  is 
broken  only  by  the  distant  shouts  of  a  peasant  or  two  struggling  with 
their  oxen  and  plows ;  the  occasional  lowing  of  cattle  floats  past  on  the 
stronger  breeze  of  evening.  The  Cubans  rank  this  as  their  most  en- 
trancing landscape,  but  I  have  seen  as  pretty  views  from  the  abandoned 
farms  of  Connecticut?  For  one  thing  the  colors  are  not  variegated 
enough  in  this  seasonless  land  to  give  such  scenes  the  beauty  lent  by 
changing  leaves,  though  much  else  is  made  up  for  by  the  majesty  of 
the  royal  palms. 

A  gentler  climb  at  the  other  end  of  town,  between  broad  fields  of 
rope-producing  cactus,  brings  one  to  a  cheap  wooden  house  which  might 
pass  unnoticed  but  for  the  incongruous  rumble  of  an  electric  dynamo 
within  it.  In  sight  of  the  commonplace  landscape  it  is  easy  to  believe 
the  story  that  the  caves  of  Bellamar  remained  for  centuries  unknown 
until  a  Chinese  coolie  extracting  limestone  for  a  near-by  kiln  discovered 


64  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

them  by  losing  his  crowbar  through  a  hole  he  had  poked  in  the  earth. 
To-day  they  are  exploited  by  the  rope-making  company  which  owns 
the  surrounding  fields.  The  main  portion  of  the  huge  limestone  cavern 
has  been  fitted  with  electric  lights,  which  of  themselves  destroy  half 
the  romance  of  the  subterranean  chambers;  the  temperature  is  that 
of  a  Turkish  bath,  and  the  stereotyped  chatter  of  the  guide  grows 
worse  than  tiresome.  But  it  would  be  a  pity  to  let  these  minor  draw- 
backs repel  the  traveler  from  visiting  Cuba's  weirdest  scene.  The  cave 
contains  more  than  thirty  chambers  or  halls,  the  chief  of  which  is  the 
"  Gothic  Temple,"  two  hundred  and  fifty  by  eighty  feet  in  extent,  its 
lofty  roof  upheld  by  massive  white  columns.  There  are  immense 
natural  bath-tubs,  forming  waterfalls,  fantastic  grottoes  and  nature- 
sculptured  figures  of  all  shapes  and  sizes  along  the  undulating  central 
passageway  that  stretches  far  away  into  the  unlighted  earth.  Mounds 
that  look  like  snow-banks,  towering  walls  that  seem  shimmering  cur- 
tains, white  glistening  slopes  down  which  one  might  easily  fancy  oneself 
tobogganing,  so  closely  do  they  resemble  our  Northern  hillsides  in 
mid-winter,  resound  with  the  cackling  voice  of  the  irrepressible  guide. 
Of  stalagmites  and  stalactites  of  every  possible  size  there  is  no  end,  some 
of  them  slowly  joining  together  to  form  others  of  those  mighty  columns 
which  seem  to  bear  aloft  the  outer  earth.  The  caves  are  admirably 
fitted,  except  in  temperature,  to  serve  as  setting  for  the  more  fantastic 
of  Wagner  operas. 

If  the  train  is  not  yet  due,  it  is  worth  while  to  visit  the  rope  factory 
near  the  station.  As  they  reach  full  size  the  lower  leaves  of  the  hcnc- 
quen  plants  are  cut  off  one  by  one  and  carried  to  the  crushing-house 
on  a  knoll  behind  the  main  establishment.  Here  they  are  passed  be- 
tween grooved  rollers,  the  green  sap  and  pulp  falling  away  and  leaving 
bunches  of  greenish  fibers  like  coarser  corn-silk,  which  shoot  down 
across  a  little  valley  on  cables  to  the  drying-field.  Looped  over  long 
rows  of  poles,  they  remain  here  for  several  days,  until  the  sun  has 
dried  and  bleached  them  to  the  color  of  new  rope.  Massive  machines 
tended  by  women  and  men  weave  the  fibers  together  in  cords  of  hun- 
dreds of  yards  long  and  of  the  diameter  of  binding-twine ;  similar  ma- 
chines twist  three  of  these  into  the  resemblance  of  clothes-lines,  which 
in  their  turn  are  woven  together  three  by  three,  the  process  being 
repeated  un-til  great  coils  of  ship's  hawsers  far  larger  than  the  hand 
can  encircle  emerge  at  the  far  end  of  the  room  ready  for  shipment. 

From  Matanzas  eastward  fruit  and  garden  plots,  and  the  more  in- 
tensive forms  of  cultivation,  die  out  and  the  landscape  becomes  almost 


CUBA  FROM  WEST  TO  EAST          65 

unbroken  expanses  of  sugar-cane.  The  soil  is  more  apt  than  not  to 
be  reddish.  Automobiles  disappear;  in  their  place  are  many  men  on 
horseback  and  massive  high-wheeled  carts  drawn  by  oxen.  On  the 
whole  the  country  is  flat,  uninteresting,  with  endless  stretches  of  cane- 
fields,  palm-trees,  and  nothing  else.  A  branch  line  will  carry  one  to 
Cardenas,  but  it  is  hot,  dusty,  and  dry,  as  parched  as  the  Carolinas  in 
early  autumn,  scarcely  worth  visiting  unless  one  takes  time  to  push  on 
to  its  far-famed  beach  long  miles  away.  Far-famed,  that  is,  in  Cuba, 
where  beaches  are  rare  and  water  sports  much  less  popular  than  might 
be  expected  in  a  land  where  the  sea  is  always  close  at  hand  and  sum- 
mer reigns  the  entire  twelve-month.  Now  and  again  some  unheralded 
scene  breaks  the  cane-green  monotony.  There  is  the  little  town  of 
Colon,  for  example,  intersected  by  the  railroad,  which  passes  along  the 
very  edge  of  its  central  plaza,  decorated  with  a  bronze  statue  of  Colum- 
bus discovering  his  first  land  —  and  holding  in  his  left  hand  a  two-ton 
anchor  which  he  seems  on  the  point  of  tossing  ashore. 

The  older  railroad  line  ends  at  Santa  Clara,  one  of  the  few  important 
towns  of  Cuba  which  do  not  face  the  sea.  But  the  two  daily  expresses 
merely  change  engines  and  continue,  in  due  season,  to  the  eastward. 
An  energetic  Anglo-Saxon  pushed  a  line  through  the  remaining  two 
thirds  of  the  island  within  four  years  after  American  intervention, 
without  government  assistance,  without  even  the  privilege  of  exercising 
the  right  of  eminent  domain,  though  the  Spaniards  had  been  "  studying 
the  project "  for  a  half  century.  There  are  no  osteopaths  in  Santa 
Clara.  They  are  not  needed ;  a  ride  through  its  incredibly  rough  and 
tumble  streets  serves  the  same  purpose.  In  Havana  it  is  often  imprac- 
ticable for  two  persons  to  pass  on  the  same  sidewalk;  in  many  of  these 
provincial  towns  it  is  impossible.  The  people  of  Santa  Clara  seem 
content  to  make  their  way  through  town  like  mountain  goats,  leaping 
from  one  lofty  block  of  cement  to  mud-reeking  roadway,  clambering  to 
another  waist-high  sidewalk  beyond,  mounting  now  and  then  to  the 
crest  of  precipices  so  narrow  and  precarious  that  the  dizzy  stranger  feels 
impelled  to  clutch  the  flanking  house-wall,  only  to  descend  again  swiftly 
to  the  street  level,  climbing  over  on  the  way  perhaps  a  family  or  two 
"  taking  the  air  "  and  greeting  them  with  an  inexplicably  courteous 
"  Muy  buenas  noches."  The  citizens  grumble  of  course  at  the  condition 
of  their  streets  and  make  periodical  demands  upon  the  federal  govern- 
ment to  pave  them,  as  in  all  Latin  America.  The  question  often  sug- 
gests itself,  why  the  dev — ,  I  don't  mean  to  be  profane,  whatever  the 
provocation, —  but  why  in  —  er  —  the  world  don't  you  get  together 


66  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

and  pave  them  yourselves?  But  of  course  any  newsboy  could  give  a 
score  of  reasons  why  all  such  matters  as  that  are  exclusive  affairs  of 
"  the  government,"  and  he  would  pronounce  the  word  as  if  it  were 
some  supernatural  power  wholly  independent  of  mere  human  assistance. 

In  contrast,  the  central  plaza  of  course  is  perfectly  kept  and,  though 
empty  by  day,  is  more  or  less  crowded  in  the  evening,  particularly  when 
the  band  plays.  Seeing  only  the  crowd  which  parades  under  the  royal 
palms  in  the  moonlight,  the  visitor  might  come  to  the  false  conclusion 
that  the  majority  of  the  population  is  white,  and  he  would  make  a  similar 
error  in  the  opposite  direction  if  he  saw  the  town  only  by  day.  At  the 
evening  promenade  there  is  a  great  feminine  display  of  furs,  though  it  is 
about  cold  enough  for  a  silk  bathing-suit;  the  club  members  have  a 
pleasant  custom  of  gathering  in  rocking-chairs  on  the  sidewalks  before 
their  social  meeting-places  facing  the  square.  Club  life  in  Cuba  fol- 
lows the  lead  of  family  life  in  the  wide-openness  of  its  more  public 
functions,  though  of  course  there  is  more  intimate  club  and  family 
activity  far  to  the  rear  of  the  open  parlors. 

If  one  is  in  a  lazy  mood  one  rather  enjoys  Santa  Clara,  though  a 
hurried  mortal  would  probably  curse  its  leisurely  ways,  its  languid 
style  of  shopping,  for  instance,  with  chairs  for  customers,  and  the  in- 
variably male  clerks  thinking  nothing  of  pausing  in  the  midst  of  a  pur- 
chase to  discuss  the  latest  cock-fight  with  a  friendly  lounger.  We 
voted  the  place  picturesque,  yet  when  we  took  to  wondering  what  made 
it  so  we  could  specify  little  more  than  the  crowds  of  guajiros  astride 
their  horses,  their  produce  in  saddle-sacks  beneath  their  elevated  legs, 
who  jogged  silently  through  the  muddy  streets.  Some  of  these  were  so 
superstitious  in  the  matter  of  photography  that  they  could  only  be 
caught  by  trickery.  In  the  evening  hours  almost  every  block  resounded 
with  the  efforts  of  amateur  pianists.  The  Cubans  are  always  beating 
pianos,  but  they  are  strangely  unmusical.  I  have  been  told  that  a 
famous  Cuban  pianist  won  unstinted  applause  in  New  York,  but  of  the 
hundreds  we  heard  on  the  island  each  and  all  would  almost  infallibly 
have  won  something  far  less  pleasing. 

Musically  the  Cuban  is  best  at  the  native  danzon,  a  refinement  of 
the  savage  African  rumba.  But  every  town  large  or  small  has  its 
weekly  concerts.  Perhaps  the  most  amusing  one  we  attended  was  at 
the  sugar-mill  village  of  Jatibonico.  The  players  were  simple  youths 
of  the  town,  as  varied  in  complexion  and  garb  as  the  invariably  tar- 
brushed  promenaders  who  filed  round  and  round  the  grass-grown 
plaza.  The  instruments  were  so  unorthodox  that  we  paused  to  make  an 


CUBA  FROM  WEST  TO  EAST          67 

inventory  of  them.  Besides  a  cornet  played  by  an  energetic  youth  who 
now  and  then  made  it  heard  far  beyond  the  reach  of  the  rest  of  the 
uproar,  there  was  a  trombone  and  two  of  what  seemed  to  be  half- 
breeds  among  horns,  the  manipulators  of  which  varied  the  effect  by  now 
and  then  holding  their  hats  over  the  sound  exit.  Then  there  was  a 
cowhorn-shaped  gourd  which  was  scraped  with  a  stick,  a  block  of  ebony 
that  was  periodically  pounded  by  the  same  man  who  tortured  the  bass 
viol,  two  kettle-drums  which  would  not  be  silenced  on  any  pretext, 
a  large  metal  bowl  shaped  like  a  water- jar,  that  had  originally  come 
from  Spain  filled  with  butter,  in  the  single  opening  of  which  the  player 
alternately  blew  and  sucked,  giving  a  weird,  echo-like  sound,  and,  to  fill 
in  any  possible  interstices  of  sound  left,  two  heathenish  rattles.  The 
band  had  no  leader ;  each  played  or  paused  to  smoke  a  cigarette  as  the 
spirit  moved  him,  and  all  played  by  ear.  The  unexpected  sight  of  white 
people  among  the  promenaders  caused  the  entire  band  to  begin  a  series 
of  monkey-like  antics  in  an  endeavor  to  outdo  one  another  in  showing 
off,  until  the  tomtom  effect  of  the  entertainment  took  on  a  still  more 
African  pandemonium.  To  this  was  added  the  rumble  of  frequent 
trains  along  the  near-by  track  and  the  vocal  uproar  of  the  promenaders, 
striving  to  imitate  in  garb  and  manner  the  retreta  audiences  of  the  larger 
cities.  Long  after  we  had  retired  a  bugle-burst  from  the  enthusiastic 
cornet-player  now  and  then  floated  to  our  ears  through  the  tropical  night, 
for  the  amateurs  had  none  of  the  weariness  of  professional  musicians. 
When  the  plaza  audience  deserted  them  toward  midnight,  they  set  out 
on  a  serenading  party  to  the  by  no  means  most  respectable  houses. 
Some  of  them  sang  as  well  as  played,  in  that  horrible  harmony  of 
Cuba's  rural  falsetto  tenors,  only  one  of  whom  we  ever  heard  without 
an  all  but  overwhelming  desire  to  fling  the  heaviest  object  within 
reach. 

Cienfuegos,  on  the  seacoast  south  of  Santa  Clara,  is  said  to  derive 
its  name  from  the  exclamation  of  a  sailor  who  beheld  a  hundred  Indian 
fires  along  the  beach.  It  might  easily  have  won  a  similar  designation 
from  some  wrathful  description  of  its  climate.  The  town  was  laid  out  a 
mere  century  ago  by  a  Frenchman  named  Declouet,  and  many  of  its 
streets  still  have  French  names.  It  is  reputed  to  be  the  richest  town 
per  capita  on  earth,  though  the  uninformed  stranger  might  not  suspect 
that  from  its  appearance.  It  gives  somewhat  more  attention  to  pave- 
ments than  some  of  its  neighbors,  to  be  sure,  and  has  electric  street- 
cars. But  ostentation  of  its  wealth  is  not  among  the  faults  of  Cien- 
fuegos, perhaps  because  it  takes  its  cue  from  its  wealthiest  citizen,  who 


68  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

is  said  to  lead  by  more  than  a  neck  all  the  millionaires  of  Cuba.  Like 
Mihanovisch  in  the  Argentine,  or  the  first  Astor  and  Vanderbilt  in  our 
own  land,  this  financial  nabob  of  Cuba  began  at  the  bottommost  rung  of 
the  ladder,  having  arrived  from  Spain  in  alpargatas  and  taken  to  carry- 
ing bags  of  cement  on  the  docks.  To-day  he  is  past  eighty-five  and 
owns  most  of  the  property  in  Cienfuegos  and  its  vicinity,  yet,  as  one  of 
his  fellow-townsmen  put  it,  "  if  you  meet  him  on  the  street  you  want 
to  give  him  an  old  suit  of  clothes."  During  the  war  he  was  placed 
on  the  British  black-list,  and  was  forced  to  come  often  to  a  certain 
consulate  in  an  effort  to  clear  himself,  yet  he  invariably  came  on  foot 
even  though  Cienfuegos  lay  prostrate  under  its  skin-scorching  summer 
noonday.  He  lived  across  the  bay,  and  while  there  were  millions  in- 
volved in  the  business  on  hand  at  the  consulate,  he  invariably  persisted 
in  leaving  in  time  to  catch  the  twenty-cent  public  boat,  lest  he  be  forced 
to  pay  a  dollar  and  a  half  for  a  special  launch.  He  abhors  modern  ways 
and  in  particular  the  automobile,  and  refuses  to  do  business  with  any 
one  who  arrives  at  his  office  in  one.  The  story  goes  that  for  a  long 
time  after  the  rest  of  the  island  had  adopted  them  Cienfuegos  did  not 
dare  to  import  a  single  automobile  for  fear  of  the  wrath  of  its  financial 
czar. 

But  if  the  miser  of  Cienfuegos  holds  the  palm  for  wealth,  one  of  his 
near  rivals  in  that  regard  outdoes  him  in  political  power.  He,  too, 
is  a  Spaniard,  or,  more  exactly,  a  Canary  Islander,  like  many  of  the 
wealthiest  men  of  Cuba.  To  be  born  in  the  Canary  Islands  and  to 
come  to  Cuba  without  a  peseta  or  even  the  rudiments  of  education  seems 
to  be  the  surest  road  to  riches.  I  could  not  risk  setting  down  without 
definite  proof  to  protect  me  the  perfectly  well-known  stories  of  how 
"  Pote  "  got  his  start  in  life.  Though  he  owns  immense  sugar  estates 
and  countless  other  properties  of  all  kind  throughout  the  island,  he  is 
rarely  to  be  distinguished  from  any  unshaven  peon,  and  even  when 
a  new  turn  of  the  political  wheel  brings  him  racing  to  Havana  in  a 
powerful  automobile  he  still  looks  like  some  third-class  Spanish  grocer. 
Not  until  long  years  after  the  island  became  independent  did  the  gov- 
ernment become  powerful  enough  to  force  "  Pote "  to  remove  the 
Spanish  flag  from  his  buildings  and  locomotives,  and  the  "  J.  R.  L."  on 
the  latter  still  give  them  the  right  of  way  over  many  a  rival  cane- 
grower;  for  "  Pote,"  whisper  the  managers  of  corporation  sugar-mills, 
has  ways  of  getting  his  product  to  the  market  which  those  who  must 
explain  to  auditors  and  directors  higher  up  cannot  imitate. 

It  is  not  without  significance  for  the  future  of  Cuba  that  men  of 


CUBA  FROM  WEST  TO  EAST          69 

this  type,  uneducated,  unscrupulous,  utterly  without  any  ideal  than  the 
amassing  of  millions,  wholly  without  vision,  have  the  chief  power  in  its 
affairs.  Politically  the  island  has  been  freed  from  Spanish  rule, 
economically  it  is  still  paying  tribute  not  merely  in  material  things,  but 
in  spiritual,  to  the  most  sordid-minded  of  the  grasping  peninsulares. 

One  other  town  and  I  am  done  with  them,  for  though  Sagua  la 
Grande  and  Caibarien,  Ciego  de  Avila  and  picturesque  Trinidad,  at 
least,  are  worthy  a  passing  notice,  there  is  something  distinctive  about 
Camagiiey,  though  the  difference  is  after  all  elusive  and  baffling.  For 
one  thing  it  is  more  than  four  hundred  years  old ;  for  another  it  is  the 
largest  town  in  the  interior  of  Cuba.  Even  it,  however,  did  not  shun 
the  coast  by  choice,  but  ran  away  from  the  northern  shore  in  its  early 
youth  to  escape  the  pirates,  and,  to  make  doubly  sure  of  concealment, 
changed  its  name  from  Puerto  Principe  to  that  of  the  Indian  village 
in  which  it  resettled.  Its  antiquity  is  apparent,  appalling,  in  fact. 
Projecting  wooden  window  grilles,  heavy  cornices,  aged  balconies,  also 
of  wood,  and  tiled  roofs  hanging  well  over  the  street,  crumbling 
masonry,  all  help  to  prove  the  city  a  genuine  antique.  Few  of  its  streets 
are  straight,  few  parallel,  few  meet  at  right  angles,  the  result  being  to 
give  the  visitor  a  curiously  shut-in  feeling.  It  is  said  that  this  civic 
helter-skelter  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  refugees  from  the  harassed  coast 
staked  their  claims  and  built  their  houses  at  random  in  their  haste  to 
get  under  cover,  though  there  is  a  bon  mot  to  the  effect  that  the  streets 
were  purposely  made  crooked  to  fool  the  pirates.  The  town  is  noted 
for  its  tina jones,  in  the  legitimate  sense,  that  is,  for  in  Spanish  the  word 
means  not  only  an  immense  earthenware  jar,  but  a  person  with  a  large 
capacity  for  liquid  refreshment.  Some  of  these-  jars  would  easily 
contain  the  largest  human  tina j on;  the  majority  of  them  are  more  than 
a  hundred  years  old ;  there  are  said  to  be  none  younger  than  sixty. 
They  serve  the  same  purpose  as  our  cisterns.  Several  ancient  churches 
lift  their  weather-dulled  gray  walls  and  towers  above  the  mass  of  old 
houses.  The  majority  of  these  are  down  at  heel,  their  facades  battered 
and  cracked,  though  the  patios  or  small  gardens  in  their  rear  are  gay 
with  flowers  and  shrubbery.  Most  of  its  streets  were  once  paved,  but 
that,  too,  was  long  ago,  and  during  the  frequent  rainy  days  one  must 
pick  one's  way  across  them  by  the  scattered  cobbles  embedded  in  mud 
as  over  a  stream  on  stepping-stones.  The  railroad  once  offered  to  pave 
at  its  own  expense  the  slough  bordering  the  station,  but  the  local 
politicians  would  not  permit  it,  for  the  same  reason  that  Tammany 
prefers  to  let  its  own  contracts.  Even  the  social  customs  of  Camagiiey 


70  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

are  ancient.  If  "  any  one  who  is  any  one  "  dies,  for  instance,  as  they 
do  not  infrequently,  "  everything  "  closes  and  all  social  functions  are 
abandoned,  often  to  the  dismay  of  hostesses.  The  town  is  said  to  be 
famed  for  its  beautiful  women  and  its  skilled  horsemen ;  its  color-line 
is  reputed  more  strict  and  its  negro  population  less  numerous  than  in 
the  rest  of  Cuba,  at  least  three  of  these  things  being  credited  to  the  fact 
that  the  region  was  long  given  over  to  cattle  rather  than  sugar-cane, 
requiring  fewer  slaves.  The  casual  visitor,  however,  sees  little  to  con- 
firm these  statements. 

To-day  even  Camagiiey  province  has  succumbed  to  the  cane  invasion, 
like  all  Cuba,  and  the  raising  of  cattle  has  become  a  secondary  industry. 
Droves  of  the  hardy,  long-horned,  brown  breed  may  still  be  grazing 
the  savanna  lands,  searching  the  valleys  for  tasty  guinea-grass,  standing 
knee-deep  in  the  little  rivers,  but  Cuba  now  imports  meat,  in  contrast 
to  the  days  when  the  exporting  of  cattle  was  one  of  her  chief  sources 
of  revenue.  The  climate  has  had  its  share  in  bringing  this  change. 
Not  only  does  it  cause  the  milk  to  deteriorate  in  quantity  and  quality 
within  a  very  few  years,  but  the  animals  decrease  steadily  in  size  from 
generation  to  generation.  Butter,  unless  of  the  imported  variety,  is  as 
rare  in  Cuba  as  in  all  tropical  America,  and  the  invariable  custom  of 
boiling  milk  before  using  makes  it  by  no  means  a  favorite  beverage. 
Besides,  the  constant  drought  in  the  United  States  does  not  extend  to 
Cuba.  But  all  these  causes  are  but  slight  compared  with  the  sky- 
rocketing price  of  sugar,  which  is  swamping  all  other  industries  in  the 
island,  nay,  even  its  scenery,  beneath  endless  seas  of  cane. 

Our  good  hosts  of  Tuinucu  varied  their  hospitality  by  bearing  us 
off  on  a  two-days'  horseback  journey  into  the  neighboring  mountains. 
A  hand-operated  ferry  and  a  road  that  was  little  more  than  a  trail, 
except  in  width,  brought  us  to  the  Old  World  town  of  Sancti  Spiritus, 
founded  in  1514  and  rivaling  in  medieval  architecture  and  atmosphere 
almost  anything  Spain  has  to  offer.  Here  a  practice,  which  corresponds 
to,  but  is  apt  to  mean  much  less  than  a  guide,  took  the  party  in  charge 
and  trotted  away  toward  the  foothills,  A  group  of  priests  in  their 
somber,  flowing  gowns  and  shovel  hats  grinned  offensively  at  the  un- 
wonted sight  of  ladies  riding  man-fashion,  and  the  townsmen  stared 
with  the  customary  Latin-American  impudence,  but  the  countrymen 
greeted  us  with  the  dignified  courtesy  of  old  Castilian  grandees.  Pack- 
trains  shuffled  past  in  the  deep  dust  now  and  then,  the  dozen  or  more 
undersized  horses  tied  together  from  tails  to  halters.  The  fact  that 


CUBA  FROM  WEST  TO  EAST          71 

this  left  the  animals  no  protection  from  the  vicious  flies  meant  no  more 
to  the  compassionles^ guajiros  than  did  the  raw  backs  under  the  heavy, 
chafing  packs.  Cuba,  like  all  Latin  America,  is  a  bad  country  in  which 
to  be  a  horse,  or  any  other  dumb  animal  for  that  matter.  Much  of  the 
country  was  uncultivated,  though  royal  palms  and  guinea-grass  testified 
to  its  fertility.  Big  dark-red  oxen  or  bulls  were  here  and  there  plowing 
the  gentler  hillsides,  more  of  them  stood  or  lay  at  ease  under  the 
spreading  ceiba  trees.  The  region  was  once  famed  for  its  coffee,  but 
even  the  few  bushes  that  are  left  get  no  care  nowadays  and  the  time 
is  already  at  hand  when  they  are  to  give  way  before  the  militant  sugar- 
cane. 

We  turned  into  an  old  estate  where  a  hundred  slaves  had  once  toiled. 
All  but  a  corner  of  it  was  overgrown  with  bush ;  the  massive  old  planta- 
tion house  had  lost  all  its  former  grandeur  except  the  magnificent  views 
from  its  verandas.  A  disheveled  family  of  guajiros  inhabited  it  now, 
its  cobbled  courtyard  seldom  resounded  to  the  hoofs  of  horses  bringing 
guests  to  its  very  parlor  door,  the  broad,  brick-paved  coffee-floor  was 
grass-grown  between  its  joints,  the  old  slave  inclosure  had  been  turned 
over  to  the  pigs,  feeding  on  palmiche,  the  berries  of  the  royal  palm. 
The  slattern  who  thrust  her  head  out  of  the  ruined  kitchen  building 
had  little  claim  to  propriety  of  appearance,  though  she  answered  a 
joking  question  as  to  whether  she,  too,  would  ride  astride  with  a  fervent, 
"  Not  I,  God  protect  me !  " 

Reminiscences  of  slave  days  brought  forth  the  story  of  "  Old  Con- 
cha "  as  we  rode  onward.  She  had  been  a  slave  on  Tuinucu  estate  as 
far  back  as  any  one  could  remember,  still  is,  in  fact,  in  her  own  estima- 
tion. No  one  knows  how  old  she  is,  except  that  she  was  married  and 
had  several  children  when  the  mother  of  her  present  mistress  was  a 
child.  Her  own  answer  to  the  question  is  invariably  "  thirteen."  All 
day  long  she  potters  about  the  kitchen,  though  great  effort  has  been 
made  to  get  her  to  rest  from  her  labors.  She  refuses  to  accept  wages, 
only  now  and  then  "  borrowing  "  a  peseta,  the  total  averaging  perhaps 
five  dollars  a  year,  and  being  mainly  spent  for  tobacco.  Whenever  any 
of  the  modern  servants  are  remiss  in  their  duties  or  show  a  suggestion 
of  impudence  she  warns  them  that  the  "  master's  "  whip  will  soon  be 
tingling  their  legs,  then,  recalling  herself,  sighs  for  the  "  good  old 
days  "  that  are  gone.  She  is  the  chief  authority  on  forgotten  family 
affairs,  though  incapable  of  keeping  the  "  in-laws  "  straight.  In  her 
early  days  Concha  accompanied  her  mistress  to  the  United  States. 
Arrived  at  the  dock  in  New  York,  she  submitted  to  her  first  hat,  on  the 


72  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

warning  that  she  would  be  conspicuous  without  it  —  and  raised  it  to 
all  white  people  with  whom  she  spoke.  A  custom  officer  questioned 
her  right  to  bring  in  the  fifty  large  black  cigars  which  she  had  first 
attempted  to  conceal  about  her  person,  doubting  that  they  were  for  her 
own  use.  Concha  lighted  one  forthwith  and  quickly  convinced  the 
skeptic  of  her  ability  to  consume  them.  It  is  useless  to  try  to  throw 
anything  away  at  Tuinucu ;  Concha  is  certain  to  retrieve  it  and  stow 
it  away  in  her  little  room,  with  her  "  freedom  paper  "  and  her  souvenir 
hat. 

By  sunset  we  were  surrounded  by  mountains,  though  perhaps  those 
of  central  Cuba  should  rather  be  called  ranges  of  high  hills.  The  little 
village  of  Banao  was  thrown  into  a  furor  of  excitement  by  the  arrival 
of  "  caballeros,"  and  particularly  by  the  announcement  that  we  planned 
to  camp  out  on  the  mountainside.  Picnics  are  as  unknown  to  the  Cuban 
as  to  the  rest  of  Latin  America.  Boys  swarmed  around  us  and  scam- 
pered ahead  in  the  swiftly  falling  darkness  to  show  us  a  spot  well  up 
the  slope  where  water  and  a  bit  of  open  ground  were  to  be  found. 
They  told  us  many  lugubrious  tales  of  the  dangers  of  sleeping  in  the 
open  air  and  implored  us  to  return  instead  to  the  hovels  they  shared 
with  their  pigs  and  chickens.  When  it  became  evident  that  we  were 
not  to  be  turned  from  our  reasonless  and  perilous  undertaking,  they 
took  to  warning  us  at  every  step  against  the  guao,  quite  fittingly  pro- 
nounced "  wow ! "  This  is  a  species  of  glorified  poison  ivy,  equally 
well  named  pica-pica.  Drawbacks  of  this  kind  are  rare  in  Cuba,  how- 
ever, where  there  are  few  poisonous  plants,  no  venomous  snakes,  not 
even  potato-bugs!  The  boys  remained  with  us  gladly  until  the  last 
scraps  of  the  camp-fire  meal  had  disappeared,  but  fled  with  gasps  of 
dismay  at  the  suggestion  that  they  spend  the  night  there. 

The  traveler  in  the  West  Indies  must  learn  to  rise  early  if  he  is  to 
catch  the  best  nature  has  to  offer.  Noonday,  even  when  less  oppres- 
sively hot  than  our  own  midsummers,  thanks  to  the  unfailing  trade- 
wind,  is  glaring  in  its  flood  of  colors,  insistent,  without  subtleties.  But 
dawn  and  sunrise  have  a  grandeur  and  at  the  same  time  a  delicacy,  as  if 
the  light  were  filtered  through  gauze  upon  the  green-bespangled  earth, 
which  even  the  gorgeous  sunsets  and  the  evanescent  twilight  cannot 
equal.  As  we  watched  the  new  day  steal  in  upon  us  through  the  dense 
foliage,  it  would  have  been  easy  to  fancy  that  we  had  been  transported 
to  some  fantastic  fairyland  in  which  the  very  birds  were  bent  on  adding 
to  the  subtle  intoxication  of  the  visitor's  senses. 

We  beat  the  sun  to  the  grotto  of  cold,  transparent  water  and  by 


CUBA  FROM  WEST  TO  EAST  73 

the  time  it  began  to  express  itself  in  terms  of  heat  were  scrambling 
through  the  jungle  to  the  nearest  summit.  Fresh  coffee  was  to  be  had 
on  many  a  bush  for  the  picking;  and  inviting  the  red  berries  looked, 
too,  until  a  taste  of  them  had  destroyed  the  illusion.  He  who  fancies 
Cuban  mountains  are  not  high  is  due  to  revise  his  notions  by  the  time 
he  has  dragged  himself  up  the  face  of  one  of  them  through  jagged 
rocks  half  concealed  beneath  the  matted  brush,  over  veritable  hedges  of 
needle-pointed  cactus,  now  and  again  clutching  as  the  only  escape  from 
toppling  over  backward  a  treacherous  handful  of  "  wow."  Our  gar- 
ments were  torn,  our  hands  cut  and  stinging  with  pica-pica,  our  guide 
had  degenerated  from  the  fearless  fellow  of  the  night  before  to  an 
abject  creature  who  asked  nothing  better  than  to  be  left  to  die  in  peace 
by  the  time  we  reached  the  summit ;  and  even  then  it  was  no  real  summit 
at  all,  but  only  the  first  of  half  a  dozen  knobs  which  formed  a  species  of 
giant  stairway  to  some  unknown  region  lost  in  the  clouds.  In  the  light 
of  the  struggle  it  had  cost  us  to  cover  this  infinitesimal  portion  of  the 
scene  before  us  we  seemed  mere  helpless  atoms  lost  in  the  midst  of  a 
ferocious  nature  which  clothed  the  pitched  and  tumbled  world  far 
beyond  where  the  eye  could  see  in  any  direction ;  or,  to  put  it  more 
succintly  in  the  words  of  our  host,  we  looked  like  worn-out  fleas 
caught  in  the  folds  of  a  thick  and  wrinkled  carpet. 

The  ride  homeward  was  by  another  road,  boasting  itself  a  cantino 
real,  but  little  more  than  a  wide  trail  for  all  its  claim  to  royalty.  Black 
ranges  studded  with  royal  palms  cut  short  the  horizon.  Guajiros 
slipped  past  us  here  and  there  on  little  native  horses  of  rocking-chair 
gait;  others  rode  more  slowly  by  perched  on  top  of  their  woven-leaf 
saddle-bags,  bulging  with  produce,  a  chicken  or  two  usually  swinging 
by  the  legs  from  them ;  all  bade  us  a  diffident  "  Mny  buenas."  Trees 
worthy  of  being  reproduced  in  the  stained-glass  windows  of  cathedrals 
etched  the  sky-line.  JThe  stupid  peon  who  posed  as  guide,  flapping  his 
wings  with  the  gait  of  his  horse  like  a  disheveled  crow,  knew  the  names 
of  only  the  most  familiar  growths,  which  would  not  so  much  have 
mattered  had  he  not  persisted  in  digging  up  false  ones  from  the  depths 
of  his  turbid  imagination.  Of  the  flowers,  fruit,  and  strangely  tame 
long-tailed  birds  he  had  as  little  real  knowledge,  though  he  had  seen 
them  all  his  life.  Nor  did  he  even  know  the  road ;  I  have  never  met 
a  Latin-American  "  guide  "  who  did.  A  negro  boy  on  horseback  sing- 
ing his  cows  home  from  pasture ;  a  peasant  in  the  familiar  high- 
crowned,  broad-brimmed  hat  of  braided  palm-leaves  hooking  together 
tufts  of  grass  with  a  crotched  stick  and  cutting  them  off  with  a  machete ; 


74  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

children  gathering  the  oily  palmiche  nuts  which  are  the  chief  delicacy  oi 
the  Cuban  hog,  were  among  the  sights  of  the  afternoon.  Next  to 
sugar  certainly  the  most  prolific  crop  in  Cuba  is  babies.  Black,  brown, 
yellow,  and  all  the  varying  shades  between,  they  not  only  swarm  in 
the  towns,  but  cluster  in  flocks  about  the  smallest  country  hut,  innocent 
of  clothing  as  of  the  laws  of  sanitation,  with  no  other  joy  in  life  than  to 
roll  about  on  the  ground  inside  or  around  their  little  homes  and  suck 
a  joint  of  sugar-cane.  The  houses  of  the  peasants,  still  called  by  the 
Indian  name  of  bohio,  owe  nothing  to  the  outside  world,  but  are  wholly 
built  of  materials  found  on  the  spot,  their  very  furnishings  being  woven 
palm-leaf  hammocks,  hairy  cowhide  chairs,  pots  and  dishes  made  from 
gourds  picked  from  the  trees.  The  gates  to  many  fincas,  mildly  re- 
sembling the  entrances  to  Japanese  temples,  drew  the  eyes  to  more  com- 
modious residences  as  we  neared  Sancti  Spiritus  once  more,  each  casa 
vivienda  of  a  single  low  story  covered  with  a  tile  roof  which  projected 
far  out  over  the  earth-floored  veranda  surrounding  it.  Nor  were  these 
much  different  from  the  humbler  bohijs  except  in  size,  and  perhaps  an 
occasional  newspaper  to  keep  their  owners  somewhat  in  touch  with  the 
outside  world. 

The  day  died  out  as  we  were  jogging  homeward  along  the  dusty 
flatlands  between  endless  vistas  of  sugar-cane.  But  as  I  have  not  the 
courage  to  try  to  describe  a  Cuban  sunset  I  gladly  yield  the  floor  to  the 
native  novelist  known  to  his  fellow-countrymen  as  the  "  Zola  of  the 
Antilles,"  who  has  no  fear  of  so  simple  a  task  : 

The  sun  agonized  pompously  between  incendated  clouds.  Before  it  opaque 
mountains  raised  themselves,  their  borders  dyed  purple,  orange,  and  violet. 
The  astra  itself  was  not  visible,  hidden  behind  its  blood-streaked  curtain,  but 
one  divined  its  disk  in  the  great  luminous  blot  which  fought  to  tear  asunder  the 
throttling  clouds ;  and  on  high,  light,  white  cupolas,  like  immense  plumages,  were 
floating,  reddened  also,  like  the  dispersed  birds  of  a  great  flock  that  had  been 
engaged  in  sanguinary  combat.  A  vast  silence  had  established  itself,  the  solem- 
nity of  the  evening  which  was  rapidly  expiring,  with  that  brevity  of  the  twilight 
of  the  tropics,  which  is  similar  to  a  scenic  play  arranged  beforehand.  On  the 
blue-gray  line  of  the  sea  the  clouds  had  floundered  in  an  immense  stain  of  violet 
color,  furrowed  with  obscure  edges  which  opened  themselves  like  the  spokes  of 
a  gigantic  wheel,  in  a  dress  of  whitish  blue,  raising  itself  to  the  rest  of  the 
heavens.  The  disk  of  the  sun  was  no  longer  evident ;  but,  far  off,  some  separate 
little  clouds  seemed  to  be  touched  by  a  lightly  purple  dyestuff.  The  picture 
changed  with  the  celerity  of  an  evening  sunset  on  the  stage,  visibly  obscuring 
itself,  and  by  degrees,  as  if  in  that  stage  setting  some  one  were  shutting  off,  one 
after  the  other,  the  electric  batteries,  until  the  scene  had  been  left  in  darkness. 
In  a  few  minutes  the  great  violet  stain,  formerly  full  of  light,  passed  through  all 


CUBA  FROM  WEST  TO  EAST         75 

the  tones  of  color,  to  convert  itself  into  a  great  lake,  without  brilliance,  in 
which  swam  lead  colored  flocks  of  birds  dyed  with  black.  The  delicate  dye- 
stuff  which  embroidered  for  an  instant  the  remote  little  clouds  had  suddenly 
rubbed  themselves  out.  Only  an  enormous  white  plume,  stretched  above  the 
place  in  which  the  sun  had  sepulchered  itself,  persisted  in  shining  for  a  long 
time  like  a  fantastic  wreath  suspended  over  the  melancholy  desolation  of  the 
crepuscule.  Afterward  that  went  out  also. 


CHAPTER  IV 
THE  WORLD'S  SUGAR  BOWL 

CUBA  produces  more  sugar  than  any  other  country  in  the  world. 
During  the  season  which  had  just  begun  at  the  time  of  our 
visit  she  expected  to  furnish  four  million  tons  of  it.  Barely 
as  large  as  England,  being  seven  hundred  and  thirty  miles  long  and 
varying  in  width  from  twenty-two  to  one  hundred  and  twenty  miles, 
the  island  is  favored  by  the  fact  that  the  great  majority  of  her  surface 
is  level  or  slightly  rolling,  though  the  Pico  de  Turquino  rises  8320  feet 
above  the  sea.  Her  soil  is  largely  of  limestone  formation,  with  very 
little  hard  rock.  She  has  considerable  deep  red  earth  which,  scientists 
say,  is  deteriorated  limestone  without  a  trace  of  lime  left  in  it.  Fresh 
limestone  brought  down  from  the  hills  and  scattered  upon  this  quickly 
restores  its  virgin  fertility,  and  it  responds  readily  to  almost  any  other 
fertilizers.  There  are  regions  in  Cuba  where  this  reddish  soil  permeates 
all  the  surrounding  landscape,  including  the  faces,  garments,  and  off- 
spring of  the  inhabitants,  giving  its  color  even  to  their  domestic  animals. 
At  least  four  fifths  of  the  wealth  and  happiness  of  her  population  de- 
pends on  her  chief  industry,  and  it  is  natural  that  everything  else  should 
take  second  place  in  the  Cuban  mind  to  the  production  of  sugar. 

French  colonists  running  away  from  their  infuriated  slaves  in  Haiti 
brought  with  them  the  succulent  cane,  and  at  the  same  time  a  certain 
love  of  comfort  and  various  agricultural  hints  which  may  still  be  traced 
on  some  of  the  older  estates.  But  the  industry  has  been  modernized 
now  to  the  point  where  science  and  large  capital  completely  control  its 
methods  and  its  output.  The  saying  is  that  wherever  the  royal  palm 
grows  sugar-cane  will  flourish,  while  the  prevalence  of  guinea-grass  is 
also  considered  a  favorable  sign.  As  these  two  growths  are  well-nigh 
universal  throughout  Cuba,  it  would  seem  that  the  island  is  due  to  be- 
come an  even  greater  leader  in  sugar  production  that  she  is  already. 

The  making  of  a  Cuban  sugar  plantation  is  a  primitive  and,  from  our 
Northern  point  of  view,  a  wasteful  process  consistent  with  virgin  lands 
and  tropical  fecundity.  Thus  it  seems  in  many  parts  of  the  island,  par- 
ticularly in  the  Oriente,  the  largest  and  most  eastern  of  Cuba's  six 

76 


THE  WORLD'S  SUGAR  BOWL  77 

provinces.  Here  vast  stretches  of  virgin  forest,  often  three  to  five 
thousand  acres  in  extent,  are  turned  into  cane-fields  in  a  few  months' 
time.  The  usual  method  is  to  let  contracts  for  the  entire  process,  and 
to  pay  fixed  sums  for  completely  replacing  the  forests  by  growing  cane. 
Bands  of  laborers  under  native  capataces  begin  by  erecting  in  the  edge 
of  the  doomed  woods  their  baracones,  crudely  fashioned  structures 
covered  with  palm-leaves,  usually  without  walls.  Here  the  woodsmen, 
more  often  Jamaican  or  Haitian  negroes  than  Cubans,  swing  their  ham- 
mocks side  by  side  the  entire  length  of  the  building,  if  the  long  roof 
supported  by  poles  may  be  called  that,  a  few  of  them  indulging  in  the 
comfort  of  a  mosquitero  inclosing  their  swinging  couch,  all  of  them 
wrapping  their  worldly  possessions  in  the  hammock  by  day.  Then  with 
machetes  and  axes  which  to  the  Northerner  would  seem  extremely 
crude  —  though  nearly  all  of  them  come  from  our  own  State  of  Con- 
necticut —  they  attack  the  immense  and  seemingly  impenetrable  wilder- 
ness. 

The  underbrush  and  saplings  fall  first  under  the  slashing  machetes. 
Next  the  big  trees  —  and  some  of  these  are  indeed  giants  of  the  forest 
• —  succumb  before  the  heavy  axes  and,  denuded  of  their  larger  branches, 
are  left  where  they  lie.  Behind  the  black  despoilers  the  dense  green 
woodland  turns  to  the  golden  brown  which  in  the  tropics  means  death 
rather  than  a  mere  change  of  season,  and  day  by  day  this  spreads  on  and 
on  over  plain  and  hillock  into  regions  perhaps  never  before  trodden  by 
man.  The  easy-going  planters  of  the  olden  days  were  apt  to  spare  at 
least  the  royal  palms  and  the  more  magnificent  of  the  great  spreading 
ceibas.  But  the  practical  modern  world  will  have  none  of  this  compas- 
sion for  beauty  at  the  expense  of  utility.  As  an  American  sub-manager 
summed  up  the  point  of  view  of  his  class,  "If  you  are  going  to  grow 
cane,  grow  cane;  don't  grow  royal  palms."  Everythings  falls  before 
the  world's  demand  for  sugar,  translated  by  these  energetic  pioneers 
from  the  North  to  mean  the  unsparing  destruction  of  all  nature's  splen- 
dors which  dare  to  trespass  upon  the  domain  of  His  Majesty,  the 
sugar-cane.  Mahogany  and  cedar  —  though  occasionally  the  larger 
logs  of  these  two  most  valuable  of  Cuban  woods  are  carried  to  the  rail- 
road sidings  —  are  as  ruthlessly  felled  as  the  almost  worthless  growths 
which  abound  in  tropical  forests.  Here  and  there  the  contractor 
leaves  an  immense  caguardn  standing,  in  the  hope  that  he  may  not  be 
compelled  to  break  several  axes  on  a  wood  far  redder  than  mahogany 
and  harder  than  any  known  to  our  Northern  timberlands.  But  the 
inspector  is  almost  sure  to  detect  his  little  ruse  and  to  require  that  the 


78  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

landscape  be  denuded  even  of  these  resisting  growths.  Logs  of  every 
possible  size  and  of  a  hundred  species  cut  up  the  trails  over  which  the 
sure-footed  Cuban  horses  pick  their  way  when  the  first  inspection  parties 
ride  out  through  the  fallen  woodland. 

The  clearing  of  a  Cuban  forest  has  in  it  little  of  the  danger  inherent 
in  similar  occupations  in  other  tropical  lands.  Not  only  are  there  no 
venomous  snakes  to  be  feared,  but  there  are  few  other  menaces  to  the 
health  of  the  workmen.  Now  and  again  a  belligerent  swarm  of  bees  is 
encountered,  along  the  coast  streams  the  dreaded  mancanillo  sometimes 
demands  the  respect  due  so  dangerous  a  growth.  The  sap  of  the 
mansanillo  is  said  to  be  so  poisonous  that  to  swallow  a  drop  causes 
certain  death ;  hands  and  face  sprayed  with  it  by  a  careless  blow  of 
the  ax  swell  up  beyond  all  semblance  to  human  form.  When  one  of 
these  rare  species  is  found,  the  woodsmen  carefully  "  bark "  it  and 
leave  it  for  some  time  before  undertaking  the  actual  felling.  But  with 
few  exceptions  this  is  the  only  vegetation  to  be  feared  in  a  Cuban 
wilderness.  Even  the  malarial  fevers  which  follow  not  the  cutting, 
but  the  burning,  of  the  woodlands  are  less  malignant  than  those  of  other 
equatorial  regions. 

The  burning  usually  takes  place  during  the  first  fortnight  of  March, 
at  the  end  of  the  longest  dry  season.  Indeed,  extreme  care  is  exercised 
that  the  firing  shall  not  begin  prematurely,  for  the  consumption  of 
the  lighter  growths  before  the  larger  ones  are  dry  enough  to  burn  would 
be  little  short  of  a  catastrophe  for  the  contractors.  When  at  last  the 
fires  are  set  and  sweep  across  the  immense  region  with  all  the  fury  of 
the  element,  fuel  sufficient  to  keep  an  entire  Northern  city  warm  during 
the  whole  winter  is  swept  away  in  a  single  day.  At  first  thought  it 
seems  the  height  of  wastfulness  not  to  save  these  uncounted  cords  of 
wood,  these  most  valuable  of  timbers,  but  not  only  would  the  cost  of 
transportation  more  than  eat  up  their  value  before  they  could  reach  a 
market,  without  this  plenitude  of  fallen  forest  the  burning  would  not  be 
successful  and  the  fertility  of  the  future  plantation  would  suffer.  The 
time  is  near,  however,  scientists  tell  us,  when  the  Cubans  must  regulate 
this  wholesale  destruction  of  their  forests  or  see  the  island  suffer 
from  one  of  those  changes  of  climate  which  has  been  the  partial  ruina- 
tion of  their  motherland,  Spain. 

When  the  first  burning  has  ended,  the  larger  logs  remaining  are 
heaped  together  and  reburned.  Some  of  them,  the  jucaro,  for  instance, 
continue  to  smolder  for  months,  this  tree  having  even  been  known  to 
burn  from  top  to  bottom  after  catching  fire  thirty  feet  from  the 


THE  WORLD'S  SUGAR  BOWL  79 

ground.  Though  it  is  usual  in  the  open  savannas,  plowing  is  not 
necessary  in  these  denuded  woodlands.  Here  all  that  is  necessary  is  to 
hoe  away  the  grass  and  the  bit  of  undergrowth  that  remains.  The 
primitive  method  of  planting  in  the  slave  days  still  survives.  In  some 
sections  a  man  sets  out  along  each  of  the  proposed  rows  carrying  in 
one  hand  a  long  sugar-cane  and  in  the  other  a  machete.  He  jabs 
the  cane  into  the  ground  at  intervals  of  about  three  feet,  slashes  off  the 
buried  end  with  his  cutlass,  and  marches  on,  to  repeat  the  process  at 
every  step.  More  often  nowadays  one  man  goes  ahead  to  dig  holes 
with  a  heavy  hoe,  while  another  following  him  drops  into  each  of  them 
a  section  of  cane  and  covers  it  with  a  stamp  of  his  bare  heel.  Two 
joints  and  sometimes  three  are  planted  in  each  hole,  to  insure  the 
sprouting  of  at  least  one  of  them.  There  is  a  more  scientific  system 
of  planting,  in  which  a  rope  with  knots  given  distances  apart  is  used, 
but  the  first  method  is  more  prevalent  in  the  feverish  haste  of  the 
Oriente.  The  fact  that  charred  logs  and  stumps  still  everywhere  litter 
the  ground  rather  helps  than  hampers  the  growth  of  the  cane,  for  as 
these  rot  they  add  new  fertilizer  to  the  already  rich  soil. 

Cane  requires  some  eighteen  months  to  mature  in  the  virgin  lands 
of  Cuba,  and  will  produce  from  twelve  to  twenty  yearly  crops  without 
replanting.  So  prolific  is  the  plant  in  these  newer  sections  that  when 
a  lane  several  meters  wide  is  left  between  the  rows  it  is  often  almost 
impenetrable  a  year  later.  Cane  high  above  the  head  of  a  man  on 
horseback  is  by  no  means  rare  in  these  favored  regions.  By  the  begin- 
ning of  our  northern  autumn  the  whole  island  is  inlaid  with  immense 
lakes  of  maturing  cane,  the  same  monotonous  panorama  everywhere 
stretching  to  the  horizon;  the  uniformly  light  green  landscape,  often 
spreading  for  mile  after  mile  without  a  fold  or  a  knoll,  without  any 
other  note  of  color  than  the  darker  green  of  the  rare  palm-trees  that 
have  escaped  destruction,  grows  fatiguing  to  the  sight.  Cane-fields 
without  limit  on  each  hand,  flashing  in  the  blazing  sunshine,  have  a 
beauty  of  their  own,  though  it  is  not  equal  to  that  of  a  ripening  wheat- 
field  with  the  wind  rippling  across  it.  There  is  less  movement,  less 
character;  it  has  a  greater  likeness  to  an  expressionless  human  face. 
Yet  toward  cutting-time  sunrise  or  sunset  across  these  endless  pale 
green  surfaces  presents  swiftly  changing  vistas  which  are  worth  travel- 
ing  far  to  see. 

The  "  dead  season,"  corresponding  to  the  Northern  summer,  is  a  time 
of  comparative  leisure  on  the  sugar  estates.  It  is  then  that  the  higher 
employees,  Americans  in  the  great  majority  of  cases,  take  their  vaca- 


80  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

tions  in  the  North;  it  is  then  that  the  Spanish  laborers  who  come  out 
for  each  yearly  zafra  return  to  enjoy  their  earnings  in  their  own  land. 
Then  there  is  time  for  fiestas  among  the  native  workmen  and  their 
families  and  those  from  the  near-by  islands,  who  frequently  remain 
the  year  round,  time  for  "  parties  "  and  dances  among  the  English- 
speaking  residents  of  the  batcy.  The  batey  is  the  headquarters  of  the 
entire  central,  as  the  sugar  estate  is  called  in  Cuba.  It  clusters  about 
the  ingenio,  or  mammoth  sugar-mill,  which  stands  smokeless  and  silent 
through  all  the  "  dead  season,"  its  towering  chimneys  looming  forth 
against  the  cane-green  background  for  miles  in  every  direction.  Here 
the  manager  has  his  sumptuous  dwelling,  his  heads  of  departments  their 
commodious  residences,  the  host  of  lesser  American  employees  their 
comfortable  screened  houses  shading  away  in  size  and  location  in  the 
exact  gradations  of  the  local  social  scale.  Usually  there  are  company 
schools,  tennis-courts,  clubs,  stores,  hospital,  company  gardeners  to 
beautify  the  surrounding  landscape.  Outside  this  American  town, 
often  with  a  park  or  a  flower-blooming  plaza  in  its  center,  are  scores 
of  smaller  houses,  little  more  than  huts  as  one  nears  the  outskirts,  in 
which  live  the  rank  and  file  of  employees  of  a  dozen  nationalities. 
In  the  olden  days,  when  many  slaves  were  of  necessity  kept  the  year 
round,  the  batey  was  a  scene  of  activity  at  all  seasons.  But  the  patri- 
archal plantation  life,  the  enchantment  of  the  old  family  sugar-mill 
where  each  planter  ground  his  own  cane,  has  almost  wholly  disap- 
peared before  these  giants  of  modern  industry  which  swallow  in  a  day 
the  cane  that  the  old-fashioned  mill  spent  a  season  in  reducing  to 
sugar. 

With  the  expiration  of  slavery  the  patrician  style  of  sugar  raising  died 
out.  It  became  necessary,  largely  for  lack  of  labor,  partly  for  con- 
venience sake,  to  separate  the  agricultural  from  the  other  phases  of  the 
sugar  industry.  The  more  customary  method  to-day  is  to  divide  the 
estate  into  a  score  or  more  of  "  colonies,"  each  in  charge  of,  or  rented 
to,  a  colono,  who  operates  almost  independently,  at  least  until  the  cutting 
season  arrives.  A  few  companies  are  run  entirely  on  the  administrative 
system,  directing  every  operation  from  planting  to  grinding  from  a 
central  office ;  some  own  little  land  themselves,  but  buy  their  cane  of  the 
independent  planters  in  the  surrounding  region.  But  the  colono  sys- 
tem gives  promise  of  surviving  longest.  For  one  thing,  in  case  of 
drought  or  other  disaster,  the  loss  falls  in  whole  or  part  on  the  planter 
instead  of  being  entirely  sustained  by  the  company.  Even  when  the 
land  from  which  they  draw  their  cane  is  not  their  own  property,  the 


A  Cuban  residence  in  a  new  clearing 


Planting  sugar-cane  on  newly  cleared  land 


THE  WORLD'S  SUGAR  BOWL  81 

companies  keep  a  force  of  inspectors  who  ride  day  after  day  through 
the  cane-fields,  offering  advice  to  the  colonos  here,  ordering  them  to 
change  their  methods  there,  if  they  are  to  remain  in  the  good  graces 
of  the  central  management.  The  latter  keeps  in  its  offices  large  maps 
of  all  the  region  from  which  its  mill  is  fed,  noting  on  each  plot  the 
condition  of  the  soil,  the  age  of  the  cane,  particularly  whether  or  not 
it  has  been  burned  over,  that  it  may  be  assigned  its  proper  turn  for 
cutting  when  the  grinding  season  begins. 

Fires  are  the  chief  bugaboo  of  the  sugar  growers.  All  the  fields 
are  cut  up  into  sections  by  frequent  guardarayas,  open  lanes  some  fifty 
yards  wide  which  serve  not  only  as  highways,  but  as  a  means  of  con- 
fining a  conflagration  to  the  plot  in  which  it  starts.  In  many  cases  there 
are  little  watch  towers  set  up  on  stilts  from  which  to  give  warning  in 
case  of  fire,  while  special  employees  sometimes  patrol  the  fields  during 
the  drier  months.  Rural  guards  of  the  "  O.  P."  corps  have  orders  to 
be  constantly  on  the  lookout  for  incendiaries;  when  a  fire  starts  they 
immediately  surround  the  field,  and  woe  betide  the  luckless  mortal  who 
is  caught  in  it,  for  all  Cuba  is  banded  together  to  punish  the  man  who 
wantonly  or  carelessly  brings  destruction  upon  their  principal  product. 

A  cane  fire  is  an  exciting  event,  not  to  say  a  magnificent  sight. 
Starting  in  a  tiny  puff  of  vapor  where  some  careless  smoker  has  tossed 
a  match,  from  a  passing  locomotive,  or  by  intention,  it  quickly  gives 
warning  by  the  black-brown  column  of  smoke  which  rises  high  into  the 
clear  tropical  heavens.  Whistles,  bells,  anything  capable  of  making  a 
noise,  join  in  the  din  which  summons  planters,  employees,  and  neigh- 
boring villagers  to  stem  the  threatened  catastrophe.  By  the  time  the 
bright  red  flames  begin  to  curl  above  the  cane-tops  men  and  boys  of 
every  degree,  color,  and  nationality  are  racing  pell-mell  from  every 
direction  toward  them,  colonos,  overseers,  rural  guards,  Americans, 
Chinamen,  Spaniards,  West  Indian  negroes,  Cubans  ranging  from  the 
village  alcade  to  bootblacks.  Many  of  these  bring  with  them  machetes, 
others  catch  up  clubs,  handsful  of  brush,  the  tops  of  banana  plants,  and 
fall  to  threshing  the  flames,  which  by  this  time  are  crackling  like  the 
tearing  up  of  thousands  of  parchments.  Men  on  horseback  race  up 
and  down  the  open  lanes,  directing  the  fighters,  ordering  the  cutting  of 
a  new  guardaraya  there,  commanding  the  lighting  of  a  back-fire  yonder. 
The  air  is  full  of  black  bits  of  cane  leaves,  the  sun  is  obscured  by  the 
grayish-brown  smoke  which  envelops  all  the  struggling,  shouting  multi- 
tude and  covers  the  field  with  an  immense  pall.  A  gust  of  wind  sends 
the  flames  jumping  to  another  plot,  whirlwinds  caused  by  the  heat  catch 


82  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

up  the  sparks  and  scatter  them  at  random.  New-comers  join  in  the 
turmoil,  indifferent  alike  to  their  garments  and  their  skins.  Half- 
asphyxiated  men  stumble  out  to  the  open  air,  gasp  a  few  lungsful  of  it, 
and  dash  back  into  the  fray;  the  now  immense  column  of  smoke  can 
be  seen  over  half  the  province.  The  pungent  scent  of  crude  sugar 
ladens  all  the  air.  Bit  by  bit  the  leaping  flames  decrease  under  the 
chastisement  of  hundreds  of  weapons,  or  confess  their  inability  to  leap 
across  a  wider  guardaraya.  The  crackling  loses  its  ominous  sound,  the 
voices  of  men  are  heard  more  clearly  above  it,  gradually  it  succumbs 
to  the  noise  of  threshing  bushes,  the  last  red  glare  dies  out,  and  the 
struggle  is  over.  The  motley  throng  of  fighters,  smeared,  smudged, 
and  torn,  emerge  into  the  open  lanes,  toss  away  their  improvised 
weapons,  and  straggle  homeward  in  long  streams,  while  sunset  paints 
the  now  distant  smoke-cloud  with  brilliant  colors,  flecked  by  the  little 
black  particles  which  still  float  in  the  air.  The  burning  of  a  cane-field 
does  not  mean  the  complete  loss  of  its  crop.  Only  the  leaves  are  con- 
sumed ;  the  parched  canes  are  still  standing.  But  these  must  be  cut  and 
ground  quickly  if  their  juice  is  to  be  turned  into  sugar;  the  ringing  of 
the  heavy  cane-knives  resounds  all  through  the  following  day,  and  by 
night  the  field  stands  forlorn  and  ugly  in  its  nudity. 

One  by  one  during  the  month  of  October  the  mills  of  the  island  begin 
their  grinding.  The  cutting  has  started  two  days  before,  and  inces- 
santly through  the  weeks  that  follow  the  massive  two-wheeled  carts, 
drawn  by  four,  six,  ten,  even  twelve  oxen,  drag  the  canes  to  the  mill, 
now  straddling  the  charred  stumps  and  logs  which  litter  new  fields  for 
years  after  the  first  planting,  now  wallowing  in  the  sloughs  into  which 
they  have  churned  the  lanes  and  highways.  Or,  if  the  fields  are  too 
far  away,  the  ox-carts  halt  at  railway  sidings,  where  immense  hooks 
catch  up  their  entire  load  and  deposit  them  in  cane-cars,  long  trains 
of  which  creak  away  in  the  direction  of  the  ingenio.  The  planters  are 
paid  on  a  percentage  basis,  from  five  to  seven  arrobas  of  sugar,  or  its 
equivalent  in  cash  at  that  day's  market  quotation,  for  a  hundred  arrobas 
of  cane,  a  system  which  gives  the  colono  his  share  in  any  increase  in 
price.  The  workmen,  more  than  half  of  whom  are  foreigners,  are  paid 
by  the  "  task,"  their  earnings  depending  on  their  strength  and  diligence. 
The  natives  have  a  reputation  for  doing  less  than  their  competitors. 
There  are  Cubans  who  work  in  both  the  tobacco  and  sugar  zafms,  but 
most  of  them  are  content  to  spend  from  four  to  six  months  in  the  cane- 
fields  earning  their  five  to  eight  dollars  a  day,  and  to  loaf  and  buy 
lottery  tickets  the  rest  of  the  year.  The  result  is  that  the  entire  island 


THE  WORLD'S  SUGAR  BOWL  83 

has  a  toilsome,  preoccupied  air  during  our  winter  months  and  a  holiday 
manner  throughout  the  summer. 

Grinding  time  is  the  antithesis  of  the  "  dead  season."  Then  the  dull 
sullen  grumble  of  the  mill  never  ceases,  fiestas  and  "  parties  "  are  for- 
gotten, all  but  the  higher  employees  and  the  field-men  alternate  in  their 
twelve-hour  shifts  between  night  and  day,  with  little  time  or  inclination 
left  for  recreation.  The  chimneys  of  the  ingenios  belch  forth  constant 
columns  of  smoke,  by  night  their  blaze  of  electric  lights  makes  them 
visible  far  off  across  the  country.  Once  dumped  in  the  chutes  the  canes 
have  no  escape  until  they  have  reached  the  market,  or  at  least  the 
warehouse,  in  the  form  of  sugar.  Rivers  of  juice  run  from  beneath 
the  rollers  to  the  boiling  vats;  the  centrifugals,  most  often  tended  by 
Chinamen,  whirl  the  thick  molasses  into  grains,  great  bags  of  which 
are  stood  end  up  on  the  necks  of  burly  negroes  and  trotted  away  to  the 
ahnacen.  The  porters  must  be  burly,  for  Cuba  still  retains  the  bag 
used  in  slave  days,  holding  thirteen  arrobas,  or  two  hundred  and  seventy- 
five  pounds,  and  the  negroes  insist  they  must  run  with  them  to  keep 
from  falling  down.  It  has  more  than  once  been  proposed  to  reduce 
the  size  of  the  bags,  but  this  would  require  a  change  all  the  way  back 
to  India,  where  jute  and  bags  originate. 

From  the  days  of  the  primitive  trapiche,  when  two  logs  turned  by 
an  ox  or  a  donkey  constituted  a  Cuban  sugar-mill,  through  the  period 
of  individual  growing  and  grinding,  when  an  army  of  slaves  worked 
under  the  whip  for  the  benefit  of  an  ignorant  and  often  lazy  and  licenti- 
ous owner  who  considered  that  work  his  right,  down  to  the  immense 
ingenio  and  extensive  batey  of  modern  times,  Cuba  has  been  more  or 
less  exploited  for  the  benefit  of  other  lands  and  peoples.  Even  to-day, 
when  fabulous  wages  are  paid  to  the  men  who  do  the  actual  toiling 
under  the  tropical  sun,  much  of  the  profit  from  her  soil  brings  up 
eventually  in  the  pockets  of  others.  Few  are  the  centrals  which  do  not 
win  back  a  considerable  portion  of  the  wages  they  are  forced  to  pay 
by  maintaining  company  stores  in  which  the  prices  are  exorbitant,  or 
in  selling  the  right  to  maintain  them.  Many  an  American  manager 
frankly  admits  the  injustice  of  this,  yet  all  assert  themselves  unable 
to  remedy  it.  Of  the  sums  carried  off  by  workmen  from  other  lands 
the  Cubans  have  no  complaint,  admitting  that  they  earn  their  hire. 
But  there  is  a  growing  tendency  to  grumble  that  the  island  is  being 
more  thoroughly  exploited  now  than  in  the  days  of  slavery,  for  it 
comes  to  the  same  thing,  they  contend,  whether  the  larger  portion  of 
their  national  riches  go  to  Spanish  masters  or  to  stockholders  who  have 


84  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

never  set  foot  on  Cuban  soil.  Notwithstanding  that  the  island  claims 
more  wealth  per  capita  than  any  other  land  on  earth,  the  inhabitants  are 
not  satisfied,  either  with  themselves  or  with  circumstances,  as  a  brief 
extract  from  the  native  novel  already  several  times  quoted  will  indi- 
cate: 

They  [foreign  stock-holders]  are  the  owners  of  everything,  soil  and  industry. 
We  abandon  it  to  them  with  good  grace  so  long  as  they  leave  to  us  the  politics 
and  public  careers,  that  is,  the  road  of  fraud  and  life  with  little  work.  On  the 
other  hand  they,  the  producers,  profoundly  despise  us.  It  is  the  case  of  all 
Latin-America.  While  we  gnaw  the  bone  the  true  exploiter,  who  is  no  Cuban, 
eats  the  meat.  And  if  we  growl,  showing  our  teeth,  all  they  have  to  do  is  to 
complain  to  the  diplomats.  Then  they  hand  us  a  kick,  one  on  each  side,  and  the 
matter  is  settled. 

In  contrast  to  the  United  States,  Cuba  grows  wilder,  more  pioneer- 
like,  from  west  to  east.  The  traveler  is  aware  of  this  increase  of 
wilderness  about  the  time  he  passes  Ciego  de  Avila  and  the  line  of  the 
old  trocha  across  the  island  at  the  slenderest  part  of  its  waist,  where 
are  still  seen  remnants  of  the  long  row  of  forts  from  sea  to  sea  with 
which  the  Spaniards  vainly  hoped  to  keep  the  rebels  in  the  eastern  end 
of  the  island  and  save  at  least  the  advanced  and  more  populous  western 
half  from  open  rebellion.  There  are,  to  be  sure,  aged  towns  and 
pueblos  on  the  sunrise  side  of  the  trocha.  Camaguey,  for  instance, 
could  scarcely  be  called  a  parvenu ;  and  Baracoa,  on  the  extreme  eastern 
beach  of  the  island,  is  Cuba's  first  settlement.  But  the  fact  remains 
that  the  traveler  feels  more  and  more  in  touch  with  primeval  nature 
as  he  advances  to  the  eastward. 

Small  as  it  looks  on  the  map,  it  is  hard  to  realize  that  for  vast 
distances  the  island  of  Cuba  is  still  the  unbroken  wilderness  of  the  days 
of  Columbus.  Though  it  is  frequently  broken  by  long  stretches  of 
civilization,  the  virgin  forest  is  always  near  at  hand  on  this  eastward 
journey.  There  are  frequent  sugar  estates,  immense  stretches  of  pale- 
green  cane  from  horizon  to  horizon,  but  they  are  of  the  rough,  wasteful, 
unfinished  type  of  all  pioneering.  Cattle  dot  the  great  savannas,  sleek, 
contented-looking  cattle  of  a  prevailing  reddish  tinge,  and  scarcely  bear- 
ing out  the  assertion  that  the  Cuban  climate  tends  to  dwarf  their  size. 
These  unpeopled  savannas  are  often  of  a  velvety  brown,  now  gently 
rolling,  more  commonly  as  flat  as  the  sea  itself,  and  stretching  away 
farther  than  the  eye  can  follow  with  the  same  suggestion  of  endless- 
ness. Gazing  out  across  them,  one  likes  to  let  the  imagination  play  on 
the  simpler  pre-Columbian  days  when  only  the  Siboncy  Indians  trekked 


THE  WORLD'S  SUGAR  BOWL  85 

across  them  in  pursuit  of  the  one  four-foot  game  with  which  nature 
stocked  the  island,  the  diminutive  jutia. 

Of  a  score  of  striking  trees  with  which  these  more  open  regions  are 
punctuated,  the  broad-spreading,  openwork,  lace-like  algarrobo,  thorny 
and  of  slight  value,  is  the  most  conspicuous,  almost  rivaling  the  ceiba 
and  the  royal  palm  in  the  ability  to  etch  the  sky-line  with  its  artistic 
tracery.  Stations  are  far  apart  and  primitive  in  character  in  this 
region.  Now  and  again  one  of  special  interest  brings  the  long  Habana- 
Santiago  train  to  a  laborious  and  often  lengthy  halt.  There  is  Omaja, 
for  example,  said  to  have  been  settled  by  immigrants  from  Nebraska, 
and  laboring  under  the  Cubanization  of  the  name  they  brought  with 
them.  It  is  the  same  sun-washed  collection  of  simple  dwellings  and 
wide-open  pioneer  stores  as  everywhere  greets  the  eye  of  the  Cuban 
traveler.  Yet  the  American's  influence  is  seen  in  the  immense  width  of 
its  one  street  and  the  more  sturdy  aspect  of  its  wooden  housss,  crude, 
yet  not  without  the  simpler  comforts.  The  Americans  of  Omaja,  like 
several  other  groups  that  have  settled  in  Cuba,  came  to  plant  fruit,  with 
the  accent  on  the  toronja,  or  grape-fruit,  so  popular  on  Northern  break- 
fast-tables, yet  so  scorned  by  the  rural  Cuban.  But  it  was  their  bad 
luck  to  strike  one  of  those  curious  dry  spots  frequent  even  in  the  wettest 
American  tropics,  and  most  of  the  score  who  remain  have  turned  their 
attention  to  lumber.  There  are  long  rows  of  sturdy  fruit-trees,  how- 
ever, as  heavy  with  grape-fruit  as  a  Syrian  peddler  with  his  pack,  and 
hundreds  of  the  saffron-yellow  spheres  lie  rotting  under  the  trees. 
Lack  of  transportation  answers  for  many  incongruities.  Some  of  the 
orchards  have  been  planted  with  cane,  and  only  the  deep-green  crests 
of  the  trees  gaze  out  above  the  pale-verdant  immensity.  Yet  prosper- 
ity seems  to  have  come  to  some  of  the  settlers  despite  droughts  and 
scarcity  of  rolling-stock,  for  in  the  neighborhood  of  Omaja  are  several 
big  farm-houses  of  the  bungalow  family  which  can  scarcely  be  the 
products  of  Cuban  taste. 

Beyond  come  more  miles  of  the  lightly  wooded  wilderness,  every- 
where spotted  with  cattle,  here  and  there  a  large  banana  plantation, 
and  frequent  half-clearings  in  the  denser  forest,  heaped  with  huge  logs 
of  red  mahogany  and  other  valuable  woods.  The  railroad  itself  does 
not  hesitate  to  make  ties  and  trestle  beams  of  the  precious  caoba,  the 
aristocracy  of  which  is  much  less  apparent  in  its  own  setting  than  after 
the  expense  of  distant  transportation  has  been  added  to  its  cost.  Then 
again,  like  a  constant  reiteration  of  the  main  Cuban  motif,  come  the 
endless  seas  of  cane,  sometimes  full-grown  and  drowning  all  else  except 


86  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

the  majestic  palms,  sometimes  just  started  in  a  flood  of  the  bluer  young 
plants  that  cannot  yet  conceal  the  burned  stumps  and  charred  logs  of 
regions  recently  deforested.  For  a  while  cultivation  disappears  entirely, 
and  the  dense  virgin  forest,  just  as  nature  meant  it  to  be,  impassable, 
hung  with  climbing  lianas,  draped  with  "  Spanish  moss,"  its  huger 
trees  bristling  with  flowerless  orchids  of  green  or  reddish  tint,  its  count- 
less species  of  larger  vegetation  choked  by  impenetrable  undergrowth, 
shuts  in  the  track  for  many  an  uninhabited  mile. 

But  hungry  mankind  does  not  long  endure  this  unproductive  sloven- 
liness of  nature.  Gangs  of  men  as  varied  in  color  as  the  vegetation  in 
species  are  laying  waste  new  areas  of  wilderness,  and  preparing  to  com- 
plete with  fire  the  work  of  their  axes  and  machetes  in  taming  the  un- 
broken soil  for  human  purposes.  Half-naked  families  of  incredible 
fecundity  swarm  to  the  doors  of  thatch  cabins,  to  gaze  after  the  fleeing 
train  like  wild  animals  catching  their  first  glimpse  of  the  outside  world. 
It  would  be  easy  to  imagine  that  the  clearing  away  of  the  forest  has 
uncovered  these  primitive  dwellings  and  their  denizens,  as  it  has  brought 
to  light  the  ant-nests  in  the  crotches  of  the  trees.  They  seem  as  little 
a  part  of  the  modern  world  as  the  shelter  of  some  prehistoric  Robinson 
Crusoe. 

At  Cacocum,  the  junction  for  Holguin,  up  in  the  hills  to  the  north, 
the  primitive  and  the  latest  advances  of  civilization  mingle  together. 
Gaping  guajiros  watch  the  unloading  of  apples  and  grapes,  the  chief 
delicacies  of  Cuban  desserts,  that  were  grown  in  the  northwesternmost 
corner  of  the  United  States.  The  tougher  breeds  of  automobiles  wait 
to  whiz  immaculate  travelers  from  distant  cities  away  into  the  appar- 
ently trackless  wilderness ;  inhabitants  of  those  same  Robinson  Crusoe 
huts  come  down  to  exchange  roasted  slabs  of  the  half-savage  hogs  which 
roam  the  forests  for  silver  coins  and  crumpled  paper  bearing  the  effigy 
of  American  Presidents. 

Farther  on,  we  were  still  more  forcibly  snatched  back  to  the  present 
and  the  modern.  The  train  burst  suddenly  upon  an  immense  expanse 
of  cane,  beyond  which  a  low  range  of  mountains,  black-blue  with  a 
tropical  shower,  stretched  away  with  ever-increasing  height  to  the 
southward.  Almost  at  the  same  moment  we  drew  up  at  the  station  of 
Alto  Cedro,  junction  of  the  line  from  Nipe  Bay,  into  which  a  ship 
direct  from  New  York  had  steamed  that  morning.  It  had  brought 
one  of  the  first  flocks  of  migratory  human  birds  that  annually  flee 
before  the  Northern  winters,  n«Mte  doubly  rigorous  now  by  a  nation- 
wide drought.  The  Cuban  passengers  of  the  first-class  coach  were  as 


87 

suddenly  and  completely  swamped  under  the  aggressive  flood  of  tour- 
ing Americans  as  were  the  native  chests  and  bundles  in  the  baggage-car 
beneath  a  mountain  of  trunks  which  flaunted  the  self-importance  of 
their  owners.  The  tales  of  sad  mistakes  in  picking  lottery  numbers  and 
debate  on  the  probable  arrobas  of  the  cane  zafra,  in  the  softened  Span- 
ish of  Cuba,  turned  to  chatter  of  the  latest  Broadway  success  and  to 
gurgles  of  joy  at  escaping  from  a  coalless  winter,  in  a  tongue  that 
sounded  as  curiously  anachronistic  in  this  tropical  setting  as  the  heavy 
overcoats  with  which  the  new-comers  were  laden  looked  out  of  place. 

The  moon  was  full  that  evening,  and  its  weird  effect  was  enhanced 
by  a  slight  accident  that  left  the  car  without  lights.  Royal  palms, 
silhouetted  against  the  half-lighted  sky,  stood  out  even  more  strikingly 
than  by  day.  The  moonlight  fell  with  a  silvery  sheen  on  the  white-clad 
negroes  who  lined  the  way  wherever  the  train  halted,  casting  dense- 
black  shadows  behind  them.  Below  San  Luis  junction,  where  automo- 
biles offered  to  carry  passengers  down  to  Santiago  in  less  time  than  the 
train,  the  vegetation  grew  unusually  dense,  the  most  genuinely  tropical 
we  had  ever  seen  in  Cuba.  Immense  basins  rilled  with  magnificent 
clusters  of  bamboo,  royal  palms  in  irregular,  but  soldierly,  formations 
along  the  succeeding  crests,  masses  of  perennial  foliage  heaped  up  in 
the  spaces  between  —  all  shimmered  in  the  moonlight  as  if  the  earth 
had  donned  her  richest  ball-dress  for  some  gala  occasion.  We  sped 
continually  downward,  snaking  swiftly  in  and  out  through  the  hills 
despite  the  frequent  anxious  grinding  of  the  brakes.  Here  we  sank  into 
the  trough  of  one  of  the  few  deep  railway  cuts  in  Cuba,  there  we  rumbled 
across  viaducts  that  lifted  us  up  among  the  fronds  of  the  royal  palms. 
A  white  roadway  darted  in  and  out  in  a  vain  attempt  to  keep  pace  with 
us.  Now  we  plunged  into  tunnels  of  vegetation,  to  burst  forth  a  moment 
later  upon  a  vast  rolling  plain  washed  by  the  intense  tropical  moon- 
light, which  seemed  to  fall  on  the  humble  thatched  roofs  scattered  about 
it  with  a  curiously  gentlf ,  caressing  touch.  Our  descent  grew  gradually 
less  swift,  the  hills  diminished  and  shrank  away  into  the  distance,  and 
at  length  the  lights  of  Santiago,  which  had  flashed  at  us  several  times 
during  the  last  half-hour,  spread  about  us  like  a  surrounding  army. 

The  short  stretch  between  San  Luis  and  Santiago  is  one  of  the  pret- 
tiest in  Cuba.  Travelers  covering  it  twice  would  do  well  to  make 
one  trip  in  automobile.  It  was  our  own  good  fortune  to  pass  four 
times  over  it  under  as  many  varying  conditions.  The  two-engine 
climb  in  the  full  blaze  of  day  shows  the  scene  in  a  far  different  mood 
than  under  the  flooding  moonlight;  the  ascent  at  sunset  has  still  an- 


88  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

other  temperament;  yet  it  would  be  hard  to  say  which  of  the  three 
journeys  more  fully  emphasizes  the  beauty  of  a  marvelous  bit  of 
landscape.  Possibly  the  trip  by  road  has  the  greatest  appeal,  thanks 
chiefly  to  an  embracing  view  of  Santiago  and  all  its  wooded-moun- 
tain environment  from  the  crest  of  a  precipitous  headland.  In  the  early 
days  of  American  occupation  a  splendid  highway  was  built,  perhaps 
in  the  hope  that  the  Cubans  would  some  day  be  moved  to  carry  it  on 
across  the  island  to  Havana,  perhaps  that  they  might  have  a  sample 
of  real  roadway  to  contrast  with  their  own  sad  trails.  But  the  natives 
do  not  seem  to  have  taken  the  lesson  to  heart.  They  call  the  road 
"  Wood's  Folly,"  and  though  it  still  retains  some  of  its  former  per- 
fection, the  condition  into  which  it  has  already  been  permitted  to  lapse 
does  not  promise  well  for  the  future.  To  the  Cubans,  content,  ap- 
parently, to  jounce  over  all  but  impassable  caminos,  the  building  of 
good  highways  will  probably  be  long  considered  a  "  folly." 

Though  comparisons  are  odious,  Santiago  is  the  most  picturesque 
city  of  Cuba,  so  far  as  we  saw  it  in  two  months  of  rambling  to  and 
fro  over  most  of  the  island.  This  is  due  largely  to  the  fact  that  it  is 
built  on  and  among  hills.  Seen  from  the  bay,  or  from  several  other 
of  the  many  points  of  vantage  about  it,  the  city  lies  heaped  up  like  a 
rock  pile,  the  old  cathedral,  which  some  unhappy  thought  has  subjected 
to  a  "  reforming,"  crowning  the  heap,  which  spreads  out  at  the  base 
as  if  it  had  lain  too  long  without  being  shoveled  together  again. 
Several  other  church-spires  protrude  above  the  mass,  but  none  of  them 
is  particularly  striking.  Taken  separately,  perhaps  its  houses  are  little 
different  from  prevailing  Cuban  architecture  elsewhere ;  built  as  they 
are  on  the  natural  terraces  of  the  hills,  they  are  lifted  into  plainer 
view,  each  standing  forth  from  the  throng  like  the  features  of  persons 
of  varying  height  in  a  human  crowd.  Huge  walls  from  ten  to  twenty 
feet  high  prove  to  be  merely  the  foundations  of  the  dwellings  above, 
which  look  out  head  and  shoulders  over  their  next-door  neighbors  be- 
low, to  be  in  turn  overshadowed  by  their  companions  higher  up.  San- 
tiago confesses  to  more  than  four  centuries  of  age,  and  proves  the 
assertion  by  her  appearance.  The  medieval  architecture  which  the 
conquistadores  brought  with  them  direct  from  Spain  has  persisted,  and 
has  been  reproduced  in  newer  structures  more  consistently  than  in 
Havana.  The  red-tiled  roofs  curve  outwardly  far  over  the  street  with 
a  curiously  Japanese  effect.  Balconies  high  above  the  pedestrian's 
natural  line  of  vision  prove  on  nearer  approach  to  jut  out  from  the 
ground  floor.  Sometimes  the  steep  streets  tire  with  their  climbing 


THE  WORLD'S  SUGAR  BOWL  89 

and  break  up  frankly  into  broad  stairways.  In  other  places  they  fall 
away  so  swiftly  that  they  offer  a  complete  vista  of  multicolored  house- 
walls,  plunging  at  the  end  into  the  dense  blue  of  the  landlocked  har- 
bor. 

Santiago  is  picturesque  because  of  its  quaint  old  customs,  its  amus- 
ing contrasts,  the  fantastic  colors  of  its  buildings,  and  the  tumbled 
world  that  lies  about  it.  All  Cuban  cities  offer  a  motley  of  tints,  but 
Santiago  outdoes  them  all  in  the  chaotic  jumble  of  pigments.  In  a 
single  block  we  found  house  walls  of  lavender,  sap  green,  robin's- 
egg  blue,  maize  yellow,  sky  gray,  Prussian  blue,  salmon,  tan,  vermilion, 
and  purple.  This  jumble  of  colors,  with  never  two  shades  of  the 
same  degree,  gives  the  city  a  kaleidoscopic  brilliancy  under  the  tropical 
sun  that  is  equally  entrancing  and  trying  to  the  eye.  Of  quaint  old 
customs  there  is  that  of  setting  the  entrance-steps  sidewise  into  the 
wall  of  the  house,  so  that  it  must  be  a  sharp-eyed  resident  who  recog- 
nizes his  own  doorway.  It  is  a  less  open  town  than  others  of  Cuba, 
for  the  steepness  of  the  streets  has  raised  the  windows  above  the  level 
of  the  eye,  and  only  here  and  there  does  the  stroller  catch  that  compre- 
hensive glimpse  of  the  interior  which  elsewhere  gives  him  a  sense  of 
intruding  upon  the  family  circle.  It  has,  however,  those  same  wide- 
open,  yet  exclusive,  clubs  whose  members  love  to  lounge  in  full  sight 
of  their  less-favored  fellow-citizens.  Of  contrasts  between  the  old 
and  the  new  there  are  many.  Pack-trains  of  mules  and  asses  pass 
under  the  very  lee  of  the  balcony  dining-room  overlooking  the  central 
plaza,  where  migratory  mortals  sup  in  full-coursed,  solemn  state.  On 
Saturdays  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  human  misery  crawl  in  and  out 
among  luxurious  automobiles,  begging  their  legitimate  weekly  pit- 
tance. There  are  few  Fords  in  Santiago ;  the  steepness  of  her  streets 
make  more  powerful  cars  essential  to  certain  progress.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  medieval  horse-drawn  carriage  rattles  and  shakes  its  palsied 
way  though  the  narrow  calles  with  a  musical  jangle  of  its  warning  bell. 

Time  was  when  Santiago  was  a  sink  of  disease,  if  not  of  iniquity. 
It  has  largely  recovered  from  that  condition,  and  its  hundred  thousand 
inhabitants,  tainted  in  the  vast  majority  of  cases  with  the  blood  of 
Africa,  no  longer  live  in  constant  fear  of  sudden  death.  The  prin- 
cipal streets  are  well  paved;  its  dwellings  and  places  of  public  gather- 
ing are  moderately  clean,  though  in  the  dry  winter  season  dust  swirls 
high  and  penetratingly  with  every  gust  of  wind.  The  third  city  of  the 
island  in  commercial  importance  —  Cienfuegos  having  outstripped  it 
in  this  respect  —  it  is  the  second  in  political  significance.  Some  rate  it 


90  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

first  in  the  latter  regard,  for  it  is  usually  the  pot  in  which  is  brewed 
the  most  serious  causes  of  indigestion  for  the  Central  Government  at 
Havana.  Santiago  has  always  been  noted  for  an  Irish  temperament 
that  makes  it  constitutionally  "  ag'in'  the  gover'ment." 

Outside  the  center  of  town  its  streets  are  little  more  than  mountain 
trails.  The  houses  degenerate  to  thatched  hovels  of  mud  and  plaster ; 
full-blooded  negroes  loll  in  dingy  doorways,  which  give  glimpses  of 
contentment  with  pathetically  few  of  this  world's  comforts.  Not  a 
few  of  these  outskirts'  inhabitants  are  Jamaicans.  One  recognizes 
them  by  their  ludicrous  attempts  at  aloofness  from  the  native  black 
Cubans,  by  their  greater  circumspection  of  manner.  Here  and  there 
a  group  of  them,  usually  all  women,  struggle  to  make  some  native 
urchin  understand  the  error  of  his  ways  and  the  reason  for  their  in- 
comprehensible displeasure,  and  patter  off,  at  least  loudly  discussing 
his  misbehavior  in  their  heavy,  academic  English.  In  these  sections 
the  picturesqueness  of  Santiago  is  apt  to  express  itself  chiefly  in  the 
variety  and  pungency  of  its  odors. 

Officially  the  city  is  "  Santiago  de  Cuba,"  so  called  by  its  sixteenth- 
century  founders  to  distinguish  it  from  its  namesake,  Santiago  de 
Compostella  in  Spain.  Foreigners  and  even  the  Cubans  of  the  Western 
provinces  address  it  familiarly  by  the  first  name;  the  natives  of  the 
Oriente  dub  it  "  Cuba."  Walled  on  all  sides  by  what  to  the  Cubans 
are  high  mountains,  it  offers  a  striking  panorama  from  any  high  point 
in  the  city.  In  places  the  ranges  of  big  hills,  culminating  in  Pico  Tur- 
quino,  are  as  brown,  bare,  and  nakedly  majestic  as  the  Andes ;  in  others 
they  are  half  wooded  with  green  scrub  forests,  above  which  commonly 
float  patched  and  irregular  cloud  canvases  on  which  the  tropical  sun- 
sets paint  their  masterpieces  with  lavish  and  swift  hand. 

The  city  cemetery  across  the  harbor  is  somehow  less  gruesome  than 
most  Cuban  burial-places.  For  one  thing,  it  is  unusually  gifted  with 
grass  and  trees  and  the  aery  forms  of  tropical  vegetation,  instead  of 
being  the  bare  field  of  most  compos  santos  in  Spanish  America.  Its 
graves,  however,  are  family  affairs,  built  of  cement  and  six  or  eight 
"  stories  "  deep,  so  that  the  coffins  are  set  one  above  the  other,  as  their 
time  comes,  in  perfect  chronological  order.  Over  the  top,  commonly  a 
bare  three  or  four  feet  above  the  grass,  is  laid  a  huge  stone  slab,  pre- 
ferably of  marble,  with  immense  brass  or  nickeled  rings  at  each  corner 
by  which  to  lift  it,  and  space  on  its  top  for  a  poetic  epitaph  to  each  suc- 
ceeding occupant.  As  in  all  Spanish  countries,  the  tombs  of  all  but  the 
wealthiest  inmates  are  rented  for  a  term  of  vear.s,  at  the  end  of  which 


THE  WORLD'S  SUGAR  BOWL  91 

time,  if  the  descendants  fail  to  renew  the  contract,  the  bodies  are  tossed 
into  a  common  graveyard,  to  make  room  for  those  of  greener  memory. 

Marti,  the  Cuban  "  Father  of  Liberty,"  is  buried  here,  and  Estrada 
Palma,  promoted  from  humble  pedagogue  in  one  of  our  own  schools 
to  first  President  of  Cuba.  But  neither  holds  the  chief  place  in  the 
heart  of  the  Cuban  masses.  That  is  reserved  for  Maceo,  the  negro 
general  killed  just  before  the  dawn  of  independence  during  a  foolhardy 
scouting  expedition  in  the  woods  of  Cacahual,  in  company  with  a  bare 
half-dozen  soldiers.  The  gardeners  seemed  unusually  industrious  in 
the  cemetery  the  day  of  our  visit;  it  was  only  next  morning  that  we 
discovered  they  were  preparing  for  the  Cuban  "  Memorial  day,"  which 
is  observed  throughout  the  island,  with  much  spouting  of  poetry  and 
laying  on  of  flowers,  on  December  7,  the  anniversary  of  Maceo's  death 
at  the  hands  of  the  Spaniards. 

San  Juan  Hill  is  a  mere  knoll  in  comparison  with  the  ranges  that 
surround  it  on  all  sides.  A  -street-car  sets  one  down  within  a  few  hun- 
dred yards  of  it,  or  one  may  stroll  out  to  it  within  an  hour  along  a 
very  passable  highway.  The  "  peace  tree,"  an  immense  ceiba  under 
which  the  contending  generals  came  to  terms,  is  peaceful  indeed  now, 
with  only  the  twittering  of  birds  to  break  the  whisper  of  its  languid 
leaves,  except  when  a  flock  of  tourists  swirl  down  upon  it  in  one  of 
Santiago's  hired  machines  and  bellow  for  "  Old  Jeff  "  to  come  and  tell 
them,  in  the  inimical  dialect  of  our  Southern  "  darky,"  the  story  of  his 
last  battle.  From  the  ugly  brick  tower  which  marks  the  summit  of 
the  only  Cuban  hill  known  to  the  average  American,  El  Caney  lies 
embowered  in  its  thick-wooded  mountain-slope  a  few  miles  away,  the 
same  dawdling,  sleepy  village  it  was  when  the  Americans  stormed  it 
more  than  twenty  years  ago. 

Morro  Castle,  unlike  its  prototype  in  Havana,  is  not  visible  from  the 
city;  nor  is  the  Caribbean  itself.  As  one  chugs-chugs  down  the  land- 
locked bay,  "  Cuba  "  shrinks  away,  and  finally  disappears  entirely  in  a 
fold  of  the  fuzzy  hills,  before  the  ancient  fortress,  framed  in  the  bluest 
of  blue  seas,  comes  into  sight.  Beyond  the  point  where  the  Merrimac 
failed  in  its  perilous  mission  a  sheltered  cove,  with  a  rusted  cannon 
here  and  there  among  the  bushes,  gives  landing-place,  and  leaves  the 
visitor  to  scramble  upward  along  an  ancient  cobbled  roadway  completely 
arched  over  in  place  with  the  rampant  vegetation.  Nature  is  similarly 
toiling  to  conceal  the  old  fortress  from  modern  eyes,  and  bids  fair 
in  time  to  succeed.  The  dismal  dungeons,  the  gruesome  death-chamber, 
are  still  there,  but  the  decay  that  has  let  the  sunshine  filter  into  them 


92  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

here  and  there  has  robbed  them  of  their  terror,  and  left  only  an  im- 
perfect setting  for  the  anecdotes  of  a  bygone  age.  Lizards  and  others 
of  their  sort  are  the  only  inhabitants  of  El  Morro  now,  and  through  the 
huge  holes  in  the  outer  walls  made  by  American  cannon  one  may  gaze 
out  along  the  Caribbean  to  the  hazy,  mountainous  shore  where  still  lie 
some  of  the  skeletons  of  Cervera's  fleet. 

Whatever  else  he  misses  in  Santiago,  the  traveler  should  not  fail  to 
spend  a  Sunday  evening  in  the  central  plaza.  It  is  a  small  block 
square,  completely  paved  in  asphalt,  and  furnished  with  an  equal  pro- 
fusion of  comfortable  benches  and  tropical  vegetation.  Any  evening, 
except  in  the  rainy  season  when  the  afternoon  shower  is  delayed,  will 
find  it  a  study  in  human  types ;  but  toward  sunset  on  Sunday  it  becomes 
the  meeting-place  par  excellence  of  Santiago's  elite.  They  gather  in 
almost  exact  order  of  social  rank,  the  smaller  fry  first,  then-  the  more 
pompous  citizens,  until,  by  seven  in  this  "  winter  "  season,  the  families 
that  the  foreign  visitor  never  sees  at  any  other  time  of  the  week 
stalk  past  in  the  continual  procession.  The  men,  formed  three  or 
four  or  even  six  abreast,  march  on  the  inside,  clock-wise ;  the  women 
saunter  in  similar  formation  around  the  outer  arc  of  the  circle  in  the 
opposite  direction.  A  pace  of  about  a  mile  an  hour  is  a  sign  of  proper 
social  breeding.  Negroes  are  by  no  means  lacking  in  any  Santiago 
gathering,  but  they  are  in  the  minority  at  this  weekly  promenade. 
The  color  line  is  not  sharply  drawn,  but  it  is  approximate,  in  that  each 
rank  or  group  has  its  own  gradations  of  tints.  The  women  seldom 
wear  hats ;  the  younger  girls  tie  with  a  single  ribbon  the  hair  that  hangs 
down  their  backs.  Rice  powder  is  in  plentiful  evidence  on  every 
feminine  face,  very  few  of  which,  candor  obliges  the  critical  observer 
to  admit,  can  be  called  attractive.  The  men,  never  robust,  more  often 
slender  to  the  point  of  effeminacy,  one  and  all  wear  stiff  straw  hats, 
tipped  back  at  exactly  the  angle  approved  by  the  Latin-American  ver- 
sion of  Parisian  fashion.  A  felt  hat  is  prima-facie  evidence  of  a 
foreigner ;  a  Panama,  all  but  universal  in  the  country  towns,  is  almost 
never  seen.  Swarms  of  children  of  all  sizes  and  colors,  the  offshoots 
of  the  wealthier  families,  ludicrously  overdressed,  scamper  in  and  out 
with  an  abandon  in  inverse  ratio  to  the  social  strata  to  which  they 
belong.  Saucy,  rather  insolent  boys  of  from  twelve  to  fourteen,  dressed 
like  their  elders  down  to  the  last  trousers'  crease,  swing  their  diminu- 
tive canes  and  strut  along  among  the  men,  who  treat  them  with  that 
curious  oblivion  to  their  immaturity  that  is  prevalent  in  all  Latin 
America.  Young  as  they  are,  they  are  old  enough  to  ogle  the  little 


THE  WORLD'S  SUGAR  BOWL  93 

girls  of  similar  age  in  the  approved  fashion,  half  admiringly,  half  sug- 
gestively, with  a  cynical  shadow  of  a  smile  that  seems  to  belie  the 
patent  evidence  of  their  age.  Nor  are  the  over-dressed  little  maids 
behindhand  in  the  game  of  mutual  admiration  their  elders  are  playing, 
and  they  pass  the  same  quick  signs  of  recognition  to  their  small  boy 
friends  as  do  their  older  sisters  to  their  own  forward  admirers. 

If  the  municipal  band  plays  the  retreta,  this  inevitable  Sunday  evening 
is  enlivened,  but  Santiago  comes  for  its  weekly  promenade  whether 
there  is  music  or  not.  By  the  height  of  the  evening  every  plaza  bench, 
the  entire  quadrangle  of  stone  balustrade  backed  by  the  low  grille  in- 
closing the  square,  are  compactly  occupied  with  admiring  citizens  or 
with  older  promenaders  catching  their  breath  after  their  undue  exer- 
tions. Seven-passenger  cars  filled  with  elaborately  upholstered  matrons 
deathly  pale  with  rice  powder,  with  a  few  elderly,  over-slender  males 
tucked  in  between  them,  snort  round  and  round  the  square;  the  electric 
lights  among  the  palm-trees  disclose  a  slowly  pulsating  sea  of  humanity, 
chiefly  clad  in  white ;  the  murmur  of  a  thousand  low  voices  resembles 
the  sound  of  a  broken  waterfall;  the  musical  tinkle  of  the  steel  tri- 
angles of  sweetmeat-sellers  blends  harmoniously  into  the  suppressed 
uproar.  "  Every  one  worth  knowing  "  knows  every  one  else  in  the 
throng.  The  straw  hats  are  frequently  doffed  with  elaborate  courtesy ; 
gentle  little  bows  pass  incessantly  between  the  two  opposing  columns ; 
the  language  of  fans  is  constantly  in  evidence.  The  requirements  of 
dress  are  exacting  at  this  general  weekly  airing.  Ladies  of  San- 
tiago's upper  circle  must  indeed  find  it  a  problem  not  to  be  detected 
here  too  often  in  the  same  gown;  the  men  of  the  town  may  be  seen 
hurrying  homeward  every  Sunday  afternoon  from  their  cafe  lollings 
or  their  cock-fights  to  don  their  spotless  best;  negroes  of  both  sexes, 
starched  and  ironed  to  the  minute,  walk  with  the  circumspection  of 
automatons  just  removed  from  excelsior-packed  boxes.  From  our 
Northern  point  of  view,  there  is  much  ill-mannered  staring,  an  ogling 
of  the  younger  women  which,  though  accepted  as  complimentary  in 
Cuba,  would  be  nothing  short  of  insulting  with  us.  But  with  that  ex- 
ception, and  a  tendency  of  columns  a  half-dozen  abreast  not  to  give 
way  when  courtesy  would  seem  to  demand  it,  there  is  a  general  po- 
liteness, an  evidence  of  good-breeding  in  the  slight  social  amenities  of 
daily  life,  that  it  would  be  hard  to  duplicate  in  our  own  brusk-mannered 
land. 

The  plaza  promenade  is  a  more  general  gathering-place,  a  more 
thorough  clearing-house  of  common  acquaintance,  than  any  included 


94  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

in  Anglo-Saxon  institutions.  Nowhere  do  the  inhabitants  of  our  own 
cities  so  thoroughly  mingle  together  irrespective  of  class.  At  the 
weekly  meeting  business  men  make  many  of  their  coming  engagements 

—  or  explain  the  breaking  of  one  arranged  the  week  before.     Here 
old  friends  who  find  no  other  chance  to  get  together  spend  an  hour 
talking  over  old  times;  here  youth   forms  new   acquaintances,  here 
kindred  spirits  who  might  otherwise  never  have  met  make  enduring 
friendships.     The  exclusiveness  of  family  life  wherever  Spanish  civ- 
ilization has  set  its  stamp  is  offset  by  the  intercourse  fostered  by  these 
Sunday  evenings  in  the  public  plazas.     There  the  first  tender  glances 
pass  between  youth  and  maid,  to  be  followed,  with  due  propriety  of 
delay,  by  soft  words  whispered  through  the  reja  of  her  prison-like  home, 
and  finally  by  his  admittance,  under  parental  supervision,  to  the  chair- 
forested  parlor,  whence  there  is  seldom  any  other  escape  than  past 
the  altar.     There,  too,  looser  characters  sometimes  form  their  attach- 
ments, but  always  with  due  outward  propriety.     The  best-behaved  city 
of  our  own  land  cannot  be  freer  from  visible  evidence  of  human  per- 
versity than  the  island  of  Cuba. 

Toward  eight  the  plaza  throng  begins  to  thin  out.  The  more  haughty 
ladies  of  the  znda  social  and  their  cavaliers  stroll  away  up  the  labori- 
ously mounting  streets  toward  the  better  residential  districts.  The 
second  social  stratum  follows  their  lead  in  all  but  direction,  descend- 
ing instead  the  callcs  that  pitch  downward  toward  the  harbor.  All 
but  the  rattletrap  automobiles  that  ply  for  hire  have  snorted  away. 
The  average  tint  of  the  promenaders  grows  steadily  darker.  Within 
a  half  hour  the  plaza  has  become  plebeian  again  both  in  manner  and 
garb ;  in  place  of  the  compact  throng  their  remain  only  a  few  scattered 
groups.  In  contrast,  the  luxurious  clubs,  facing  the  square,  have 
taken  on  new  life.  The  municipal  council  meets  in  its  wide-open 
chamber  across  the  way,  a  rabble  peering  in  upon  it  through  the  heavy 
iron  bars  of  the  rejas.  Inside,  beneath  an  elaborate  painting  of  San- 
tiago's first  alcade  —  who  was  none  other  than  the  conquerer  of  Mexico 

—  taking  his  first  oath  of  office,  politician-faced  men  of  varying  de- 
grees of  African  ancestry  slouch  down  into  their  seats  with  the  super- 
bored  attitude  of  legislators  the  world  over.     On  a  rostrum  backed 
not  by  likenesses  of  Cuba's  native  heroes,  but  by  a  portrait  of  Roose- 
velt as  a  young  man  and  another  of  our  own  President,  a  kinky-haired 
orator  begins  a  peroration  that  rouses  shrill  roars  of  delight  from  the 
rr/a-hugging  mob  far  into  the  moonlighted  tropical  night. 


THE  WORLD'S  SUGAR  BOWL  95 

Cuba's  patron  saint,  though  she  has  never  received  official  papal 
sanction,  is  the  Virgin  of  Cobre.  The  tale  of  her  miraculous  appear- 
ance is  monotonously  similar  to  that  with  which  most  Spanish-speaking 
peoples  explain  their  dedication  to  some  particular  enshrined  doll. 
Some  three  hundred  years  ago,  the  legend  runs,  two  men  and  a  negro 
slave  boy  from  the  village  of  Cobre,  not  far  from  Santiago,  went  to 
Nipe  Bay  to  gather  salt.  There  they  found,  floating  on  the  water,  an 
image  of  the  Virgin,  bearing  the  Child  on  one  arm  and  holding  aloft 
a  gold  cross.  After  various  vicissitudes  which  the  mere  heretic  may 
pass  over  in  silence  the  image  was  set  up  in  a  shrine  on  the  top  of 
Cobre  hill,  in  a  church  that  had  been  specially  erected  for  it. 

The  figure  is  of  wood,  about  fifteen  inches  high,  and  gaudily  decor- 
ated with  the  silks  and  jewels  given  by  the  pious  believers.  If  one 
may  accept  the  testimony  of  the  Cubans  of  the  less-educated  class, 
particularly  the  fishermen,  the  Virgen  de  Cobre  has  performed  many 
astounding  miracles.  At  any  rate,  her  priestly  attendants  have  been 
richly  showered  with  worldly  gifts,  and  her  shrine  is  surrounded 
with  costly  votive  offerings  —  or  was,  at  least,  until  some  one  ran  away 
with  most  of  them  about  the  time  Spanish  rule  in  Cuba  was  abolished. 
Pilgrims  still  flock  to  Cobre,  especially  during  the  first  days  of  Septem- 
ber, and  if  they  do  not  leave  gifts  of  value,  at  least  they  decorate  the 
church  with  crude  and  amusing  drawings  depicting  the  miracles  that 
have  been  performed  for  them,  or  with  wax  likenesses  of  the  varying 
portions  of  their  bodies  that  have  been  cured  by  her  intercession.  A 
guagua  crowded  with  women  of  the  masses  jolts  out  to  Cobre  from 
Santiago  even  during  the  off  season.  Now  and  then  one  runs  across 
Cuban  women  of  similar  antecedents  wearing  copper-colored  orna- 
ments and  even  entire  costumes  of  that  shade,  as  signs  of  having  dedi- 
cated themselves,  in  gratitude  for  her  favors,  to  the  Virgin  of  Cobre. 
Many  a  Cuban  church  displays  a  replica  of  the  famous  image,  with  a 
miniature  boat,  carved  from  wood  and  bearing  the  three  salt-gatherers, 
beneath  it. 

But  the  world  changes,  and  the  time  came  when  the  Virgin  entered, 
in  all  innocence,  into  conflict  with  practical  modern  forces  beyond  her 
control.  Copper  was  discovered  in  the  hill  beneath  her.  An  English 
company  contracted  to  make  good  any  damage  their  mining  operations 
might  cause  to  the  venerated  shrine.  During  their  tenure  the  church 
suffered  no  injury.  The  mine  was  worked  to  what  was  considered 
the  limit  of  its  real  productiveness  under  old  methods  and  was  then 


96 

abandoned.  When  world  conflict  suddenly  made  copper  worth  in- 
creased exertion,  Cobre  was  taken  over  by  an  American  syndicate. 
The  mine  had  meanwhile  filled  with  water.  When  the  new  company 
began  pumping  this  out,  the  old  supporting  timbers  gave  way  and  the 
church  of  the  Virgin  on  the  hilltop  above  began  to  sink.  In  time  it  fell 
completely  out  of  sight.  A  new  shrine,  monotonously  like  the  spire- 
less  and  uninspiring  country  churches  to  be  found  throughout  all  Cuba, 
was  erected  for  the  Virgin  and  her  pilgrims  farther  down  the  valley. 
The  Archbishop  of  Santiago — for  the  old  Eastern  city  still  remains 
the  religious  capital  of  the  island  despite  Havana's  greatness — entered 
suit  against  the  new  company  on  the  strength  of  the  old  English  agree- 
ment. In  his  innocence  of  things  worldly  and  geological  the  ecclesi- 
astic feared  that  the  tricky  Yankees  were  forestalling  him  by  washing 
out  the  ore  in  liquid  form.  An  injunction  ordered  them  to  stop  pump- 
ing, and  the  mine  rapidly  filled  again  with  water.  At  length  the  prince 
of  the  church  won  his  suit,  with  damages  in  excess  of  the  value  of 
the  mine.  The  Americans  abandoned  what  had  become  a  more  than 
useless  concession,  and  to-day  a  mineful  of  water,  colored  with  copper 
sulphates  and  lapping  undetermined  streaks  of  ore,  remains  the  property 
of  the  Virgin  of  Cobre. 

Daiquiri  is  not,  as  Rachel  was  justified  in  supposing,  a  cocktail  fac- 
tory, but  an  eminently  respectable  iron  mine  belonging  now  to  a  great 
American  syndicate.  It  lies  a  score  of  miles  eastward  along  the  coast 
from  Santiago,  and  may  be  reached  —  when  the  company  chooses  it 
shall  be  —  by  a  little  narrow-gage  railroad  older  than  Cuban  inde- 
pendence. From  a  dusty  suburb  of  the  eastern  metropolis  we  traveled 
thither  by  ciguena,  as  Cubans  call  a  Ford  with  railroad  feet.  The  half- 
breed  conveyance  roared  down  a  dry  and  rocky  cavern  to  the  coast, 
bursting  out  upon  the  incredibly  blue  Caribbean  beside  a  forgotten 
Spanish  fortress  all  but  hidden  under  the  rampant  vegetation.  For  a 
time  the  line  spins  along  on  the  very  edge  of  the  sea,  which  lashes  con- 
stantly at  the  supporting  boulders,  and  affords  the  seeker  after  scenic 
beauties  an  entrancing  vista  of  mountain  headlands  protruding  one 
after  another  into  the  hazy  distance.  This  coastal  region  has  little 
in  common  with  the  fertile  and  richly  garbed  flatlands  of  the  interior. 
Jagged  coral  rock,  known  as  dicntas  de  perro  (dog's  teeth)  to  the 
Cubans,  spreads  away  on  the  left  and  here  and  there  rises  in  forbid- 
ding cliffs  on  the  right.  Vegetation  is  prolific,  as  always  in  the  tropics, 
wherever  a  suggestion  of  foothold  offers,  but  it  is  a  dry  and  thorny 


THE  WORLD'S  SUGAR  BOWL  97 

growth,  a  menacing  wilderness  that  invites  few  inhabitants.  Only  one 
abode  of  man  breaks  the  journey,  a  cluster  of  sun-faded  huts  known 
as  Siboney,  on  a  rock  before  which  stands  a  monument  to  the  American 
forces  that  landed  here  for  the  march  on  Santiago. 

Farther  on,  where  the  sea  hides  its  beauty  behind  a  widening  strip 
of  rocks  and  bristling  vegetation,  are  a  few  fertile  patches  densely 
covered  with  cocoanut  and  banana  groves.  A  cocoanut  plantation  is 
the  lazy  man's  ideal  investment.  Once  it  is  planted,  he  has  only  to  wait 
until  the  nuts  drop  to  have  a  steady  income,  taking  the  trouble  to  husk 
them  if  he  cares  to  save  something  on  transportation,  but  needing  to 
exert  himself  no  further  unless  thirst  forces  him  to  walk  up  a 
tree  and  cut  down  one  of  the  green  nuts  filled  with  its  pint  of  cool 
and  satisfying  beverage.  The  mountains  rose  to  ever  more  impres- 
sive heights  as  the  tireless  Ford  screamed  onward,  their  culminating 
peak  exceeded  only  by  the  Pico  Turquino,  peering  into  the  sky  from 
a  neighboring  range.  Half  bare,  brown  of  tint,  wrinkled  as  the  Andes, 
they  rise  majestically  into  the  sky,  and  if  they  are  not  high  moun- 
tains, as  mountains  go  the  world  over,  they  are  at  least  lofty  enough 
to  be  cloud-capped  in  the  early  mornings  and  now  and  then  during  the 
day.  Mining  villages,  of  which  there  are  several  besides  the  "  mother 
mine  "of  Daiquiri,  began  to  appear,  perched  on  projecting  knobs  and 
knolls,  long  before  we  drew  up  at  the  port  where  hundreds  of  tons  of 
ore  are  dropped  every  week  directly  into  the  ships  —  when  ships  can 
be  had. 

The  mines  themselves  are  laid  out  in  full  sight  between  heaven  and 
earth.  For  they  are  open-work  mines,  each  "  bench  "  like  the  step  of 
a  giant  stairway,  reminding  one  of  the  Inca  terraces  of  Peru.  Steam- 
shovels  gnaw  at  the  two  horseshoe-shaped  amphitheaters,  frequent 
explosions  rouse  the  languid  mountains  to  the  exertion  of  sending 
back  a  long  series  of -echoes,  and  the  gravity-manipulated  ore-buckets 
spin  constantly  away  across  the  void  to  the  crushers  below.  Here,  too, 
the  workmen  are  Spaniards  who  remain  in  Cuba  only  long  enough 
to  carry  a  villager's  fortune  back  to  their  native  land,  and  their  labor 
in  the  open  air  gives  them  a  tint  far  different  from  the  human  moles 
of  most  mining  communities.  Their  houses  are  pitched  high  on  a 
conical  hill  far  above  the  mine,  the  married  men  living  on  the  topmost 
summit,  the  "  single  village  "  farther  down  the  slope,  no  doubt  in  order 
to  convince  the  benedicts  that  they  have  risen  to  higher  things.  A 
locomotive  dragged  us  up  to  the  bit  of  a  town,  whence  we  rode  on  horse- 
back to  the  crest  of  another  foothill,  on  which  stood  in  splendid  isola- 


98  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

tion  the  residence  of  the  bachelor  manager.  Of  the  veritable  botanical 
and  zoological  gardens  with  which  he  had  surrounded  himself,  of  the 
beauty  of  the  scene  as  the  sun  sank  into  the  Caribbean  far  below,  the 
rustling  of  the  cocoanut  palms  in  the  steady  breeze,  and  the  distant 
sounds  of  the  mining  community  settling  down  for  the  night  I  need  say 
nothing  except  that  we  regretted  we  had  not  a  hundred  days  instead  of 
one  to  spend  there. 

The  manager  had  lived  through  several  revolutions,  the  latest  less 
than  three  years  before,  and  had  grown  accustomed  to  have  some 
brakeman  or  miner  in  his  employ  march  into  his  office  at  the  head  of 
a  dozen  ragamuffins  and  announce  that  he  had  been  made  a  colonel 
overnight.  Luckily  our  host  was  quite  plainly  liked  by  all  classes  of 
the  community,  so  that  such  visits  were  usually  mere  social  calls,  and 
he  had  only  to  congratulate  the  new  military  genius,  give  him  a  drink 
and  smoke  a  cigarette  with  him  as  a  sign  of  equality  to  have  him  offer 
the  mine  his  protection  even  unto  death  and  stalk  merrily  away  at 
the  head  of  his  "  troops."  On  the  mountain-sides  across  a  mighty 
gully  and  high  above  us  were  still  the  remnants  of  old  French  coffee 
plantations,  with  native  squatters  in  the  old  houses.  By  daylight  the 
steep  slopes  stood  forth  like  aged  tapestries,  golden  brown  in  tinge  ex- 
cept where  they  were  dotted  with  immense  mango-trees  which  looked 
at  this  distance  like  tiny  green  bushes.  There  one  may  find  dogs,  cats, 
cattle,  guinea-fowls,  pigs,  and  coffee  all  gone  equally  wild  since  the 
days  when  the  plantation  owners  fled. 

Wedded  as  it  is  to  its  sugar  industry,  Cuba  is  nevertheless  capable 
of  producing  many  other  things.  Of  four-footed  game  there  is  little, 
as  in  all  the  West  Indies.  The  aborigines  must  have  been  mainly  vege- 
tarians, for  the  only  animal  on  the  island  at  the  time  of  the  discovery 
was  the  jutia,  which  looks  like  a  combination  of  rat,  opossum,  and 
woodchuck,  lives  in  mangroves  and  hilly  places,  feeds  on  the  bark  of 
trees,  and  is  so  tame  and  stupid  it  may  be  killed  with  a  club.  It  is  still 
eaten,  "  its  flesh  being  much  esteemed  by  those  who  like  it,"  as  one 
description  has  it,  though  to  the  unaccustomed  it  is  oily  and  insipid. 
During  the  last  century  deer  were  introduced,  which  are  fairly  plenti- 
ful in  some  parts  of  the  island  and  would  be  more  so  if  there  were  game 
laws  and  any  feasible  means  of  enforcing  them.  Julias  and  boniatos 
frequently  constituted  the  entire  commissary  of  the  insurgents  against 
the  Spaniards.  The  latter  is  a  tuber  so  prolific  that  an  acre,  free  from 
insects,  has  been  known  to  produce  fifty  thousand  pounds  of  it  in  eigh- 


THE  WORLD'S  SUGAR  BOWL  99 

teen  months.  Its  chief  rival  in  the  peasant's  garden  and  on  most 
Cuban  tables  is  the  malanga,  the  taro  of  the  South  Seas,  easily  dis- 
tinguishable by  its  large  heart-shaped  leaves.  Of  the  feathered  species 
there  is  a  larger  representation  than  of  quadrupeds.  Wild  turkeys, 
called  guana  jos,  abound,  the  flocks  of  guineas  are  sometimes  so  large 
as  to  do  serious  damage  to  the  crops.  The  indigenous  birds  are  dis- 
tinguished more  by  their  color  than  by  their  ability  to  sing.  The  best 
of  them  in  the  latter  respect  is  the  sinsonte,  which  not  only  imitates  the 
songs  of  other  birds,  but  has  been  known  to  learn  short  pieces  of  music. 
Snakes  are  rare  and  never  venomous,  the  largest  being  a  species  of  boa 
constrictor  with  a  tan-colored  skin,  so  sleepy  and  harmless  that  small 
boys  climb  the  trees  in  which  it  sleeps  and  knock  it  to  the  ground  with 
sticks.  Cuban  oysters  are  much  smaller  than  ours,  though  the  natives 
claim  they  are  more  succulent  and  nutritious.  There  are  lobsters  also, 
but  the  finest  of  all  Cuban  sea  foods  is  the  congrejo  moro,  a  huge  crab 
with  a  beautiful  red  and  black  shell.  Little  corn  is  grown,  and  still 
less  rice,  though  the  latter  invariably  makes  its  appearance  at  the  two 
daily  meals.  Vegetables,  except  for  the  malanga  and  boniato,  are  rare, 
as  in  all  tropical  America;  fruit,  on  the  other  hand,  almost  unlimited. 
There  are  twenty  varieties  of  bananas,  seedy  oranges  may  be  had  any- 
where, the  mango,  pineapple,  mamty,  guayaba,  mamoncillo,  guand- 
bana,  chirimoya,  sapote  or  nispero,  the  papaya,  a  tree-grown  melon  su- 
perior to  our  best  canteloupes  and  with  a  taste  of  honeysuckle,  and 
the  grape-fruit  are  among  the  many  island  delicacies,  but  only  the  pine- 
apple and  grape-fruit  are  cultivated  with  any  attention.  Even  with 
all  these  fruits  to  choose  from  the  most  familiar  Cuban  dessert  is  the 
apple,  imported  from  our  Northwestern  States  and  retailing  at  from 
twenty  to  thirty  cents  each.  Unfortunately,  though  most  American 
fruits  arrive  in  Cuba  in  perfect  condition,  few  of  those  grown  in  Cuba 
can  endure  the  joutney  to  the  United  States.  Lastly,  for  the  ever- 
present  pahna  real  could  not  be  left  out  of  any  mention  of  Cuban 
products,  this  most  beautiful  of  the  island's  trees  is  as  useful  as  it  is  in- 
comparable as  a  landscape  decoration.  The  royal  palm  has  no  bark  and 
the  trunk  is  hollow,  so  that  with  a  very  little  labor  it  can  be  fashioned 
into  waterpipes  or  split  into  a  rough  and  ready  lumber.  The  fronds 
make  splendid  roofing,  light,  yet  impermeable.  The  yagna,  or  leaf  base, 
has  a  score  of  uses.  Pigs  prefer  the  oily  little  nuts  which  hang  in 
clusters  beneath  the  leaves  to  any  other  food.  The  branches  to  which 
these  seeds  are  attached  make  good  brooms ;  salt  can  be  had  from  the 


ioo          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

roots ;  the  "  cabbage  "  from  which  the  leaves  gradually  form  makes  an 
excellent  salad,  raw  or  cooked,  and  lastly,  the  lofty  tree  is  peerless  as  a 
lightning-rod. 

Daiquiri  and  Cobre  by  no  means  exhaust  the  places  of  interest  in 
the  mammoth  eastern  province  of  Cuba.  There  are  branch  railroad 
lines,  for  instance,  to  the  western,  northern,  and  southern  coasts  of 
the  province,  each  several  hours  from  Santiago.  On  the  way  to  Man- 
zanillo  one  passes  the  village  in  which  the  "  Grito  de  Yara  "  began  the 
revolt  against  Spanish  rule,  and  in  the  neighborhood  of  which  some  of 
the  old  revolutionary  leaders  still  live.  Antilla,  in  the  north,  faces 
one  of  the  most  magnificent  bays  in  the  New  World ;  beyond  the  town 
of  Guantanamo,  noteworthy  for  its  unbroken  chorus  of  roosters,  two 
little  railways  flank  the  opposite  shores  of  the  gulf  of  the  same  name, 
one  of  them  passing  through  an  entrancing  little  valley.  The  other 
wanders  across  a  flat,  thorny,  and  rather  arid  land  to  Caimanera,  noted 
for  its  salt  beds  and  as  the  nearest  place  free  from  the  American 
drought  which  reigns  perpetually  over  the  station  of  our  marines  and 
sailors  holding  our  naval  base  of  Guantanamo  Bay. 

He  who  comes  to  Cuba  with  the  rigid  American  conception  of  the 
gulf  separating  the  African  and  the  Aryan  races  will  find  our  ward 
little  inclined  to  follow  our  lead  in  that  particular  matter.  In  the 
Havana  custom-house  his  belongings  will  be  examined  by  a  black 
man.  The  finest  statue  in  Cuba  is  that  of  the  negro  general,  Maceo ; 
had  he  lived  he  would  in  all  probability  have  been  the  island's  first 
president.  One  soon  becomes  accustomed  to  seeing  negroes  slap  white 
men  on  the  back  with  a  familiar  "  Hello,  Jim,"  and  be  received  by  an 
effusive  handshake.  Sextets  gathered  for  a  little  banquet  at  cafe  tables 
frequently  show  as  many  gradations  of  color,  from  a  native  Spaniard 
to  a  full  African,  repulsive  perhaps  for  his  diamond  rings  and  over- 
imitation  of  Parisian  manners,  and  are  served  by  obsequious  white 
waiters.  The  majority  of  Cuban  negroes,  however,  seem  less  objec- 
tionable than  those  in  the  lands  where  the  color-line  is  closely  drawn. 
Accustomed  to  being  treated  as  equals,  many  of  them  have  developed 
a  self-respect  and  a  gentlemanliness  rare  among  our  own  blacks,  or 
even  among  our  working  class  of  Caucasian  blood.  They  have,  too, 
a  pride  in  personal  appearance  scarcely  inferior  to  that  of  the  some- 
times over-dressed  white  Cubans.  Mark  Twain  once  stated  that  there 
is  much  to  be  said  for  black  or  brown  as  the  best  tint  for  human  com- 
plexions; one  is  often  reminded  of  the  remark  in  noting  how  hand- 


THE  WORLD'S  SUGAR  BOWL  101 

some  some  of  these  black  Cuban  dandies  look  under  their  stiff  straw 
hats. 

Negroes,  of  course,  are  by  no  means  in  the  majority  in  the  largest 
of  the  Antilles,  though  most  Cubans  probably  have  African  blood  in 
their  veins.  In  the  Oriente  may  still  be  found  traces  of  the  Siboney 
Indians.  Immigrants  from  all  the  varied  provinces  of  Spain,  African 
slaves,  Chinese  coolies,  Creoles  from  Haiti,  Louisiana,  and  Florida,  and 
a  scattering  of  many  other  races  have  mingled  together  for  generations; 
and  from  this  blending  of  east  and  west,  north  and  south,  tempered  by 
the  tropical  climate,  emerges  the  Cuban.  To  a  certain  extent  all  these 
types  have  kept  their  racial  characteristics,  but  they  are  only  lost  under 
the  overwhelming  influence  of  what  may  be  called  the  national  Cuban 
character,  which  varies  little  from  that  of  all  Latin-Americans.  Like 
all  nations,  the  islanders  have  their  good  and  their  bad  points.  The 
simple  amenities  of  life  are  more  thoroughly  cultivated  than  in  our  own 
quick-spoken  land.  Rudeness  is  rare;  courtesy  is  wide-spread  among 
all  classes.  One  would  scarcely  expect  to  see  duplicated  in  our  large 
cities  the  action  of  a  mulatto  traffic  policeman  stationed  on  the  busiest 
corner  of  Havana's  plaza,  who  waited  for  a  lull  in  the  task  assigned 
him  to  cross  the  street  and,  raising  his  cap,  corrected  a  direction  he 
had  given  me  a  moment  before.  I  have  heard  a  woman  tourist  who 
failed  to  understand  one  of  these  immaculate  guardians  remark  petu- 
lantly to  her  companions,  "  You  'd  think  they  'd  make  them  learn  Eng- 
lish, would  n't  you  ?  "  Our  native  tongue  is  often  useless  in  Cuba,  to  be 
sure ;  but  how  would  it  be  if  they,  whoever  they  are,  required  travelers 
to  learn  Spanish  before  entering  a  Spanish-speaking  country?  The 
general  courtesy  is  sometimes  tempered  by  unintentional  lapses  from 
what  we  understand  by  that  word;  Cubans  call  one  another,  for  in- 
stance, and  try  to  call  Americans,  by  a  hissing  "  P-s-t,"  which  is  not 
customary  in  our  own  good  society.  They  are  emotional  and  excit- 
able ;  their  necessity  for  gesticulation  frequently  requires  them  to  put 
down  a  telephone  receiver  in  order  to  use  both  hands ;  they  have  little 
concentration  of  attention,  and  are  much  given  to  generalizing  from 
superficial  appearances  to  save  themselves  the  labor  of  going  to  the 
bottom  of  things.  Of  quick  intelligence,  they  learn  with  facility  when 
there  is  anything  to  be  gained  by  learning,  but  memory  rather  than 
thought  is  their  dominant  faculty.  This  last  is  probably  due  to  the 
antiquated  methods  of  the  schools,  that  make  the  child  a  mere  parrot 
and  never  develop  his  powers  of  judgment  and  comparison,  which 
often  remain  inactive  and  dormant  throughout  life. 


102  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

His  politeness  has  its  natural  counterpart  of  insincerity  until,  in 
the  perhaps  too  harsh  words  of  one  of  his  own  people,  "  we  cultivate 
falsehood  with  a  facility  which  becomes  prodigious."  This  insincerity 
is  perhaps  natural  in  a  society  that  lived  for  centuries  under  constant 
suspicion  of  infidelity  and  surrounded  by  an  atmosphere  of  distrust 
on  the  part  of  the  Spanish  rulers.  Pride,  which  often  reaches  the 
height  of  a  virtue  among  the  Spaniards,  is  apt  to  degenerate  in  the 
Cuban  to  mere  vanity,  making  him  more  susceptible  to  flattery  than 
to  reason.  "  Our  dominating  nervous  temperament,"  says  the  native 
critic  quoted  above,  "  has  contributed  to  make  us  irritable,  sometimes 
insufferable.  On  account  of  this  sensitiveness  we  have  more  sensa- 
tions than  ideas,  more  imagination  than  understanding,  with  the  result 
that  when  we  turn  our  attention  to  anything  the  pretty  is  apt  to  have 
more  importance  than  the  true  or  useful.  We  are  better  path-followers 
than  originators ;  we  prefer  to  triumph  by  astuteness  rather  than  by 
reason ;  we  are  prodigal,  and  for  that  reason  the  thirst  for  riches  is  our 
dominant  characteristic.  The  rascality  of  our  priests,  largely  from 
Spain,  has  made  the  average  Cuban,  if  not  an  atheist,  at  least  a  skeptic 
and  indifferent  in  religious  matters." 

Americans  who  have  lived  in  Mexico,  of  whom  there  are  many  now 
in  Cuba,  all  make  comparisons  unfavorable  to  the  Cubans.  We  did 
not  meet  one  of  them  who  was  not  longing  for  the  day  when  they,  men 
and  women  alike,  could  return  to  the  land  of  weekly  revolutions.  "  I 
hear,"  said  a  visitor  from  the  North,  "  that  the  Cubans  are  rather 
slippery  in  business."  "  Say  rather,"  replied  an  old  American  resident, 
"  that  they  are  good  business  men,  with  the  accent  on  the  business." 
This  verdict  seems  to  be  almost  unanimous.  The  Cuban  has  a  habit 
of  beating  himself  on  the  chest  and  shouting  about  his  honor  at  the 
very  moment  when  both  he  and  his  hearers  know  he  is  lying.  It 
is  natural,  perhaps,  that  the  heat  of  the  tropics  should  breed  hatred 
for  work  and  cause  men  to  become  tricky  instead.  But  this  trickery 
is  less  conspicuous  in  business  than  in  politics.  The  war  gave  Cuba 
an  enormous  commercial  impulse,  yet  there  are  comparatively  few 
Cubans  in  commerce.  Parents  prefer  that  their  sons  adopt  profes- 
sions or  enter  government  service.  A  Cuban  congressman  ended  his 
appeal  for  a  bill  authorizing  the  government  to  send  a  hundred  youths 
abroad  each  year  to  study  commerce  with,  "  Those  who  do  not  succeed 
in  business  can  become  government  agents  and  consuls."  The  notion 
of  foisting  the  failures  upon  the  state  awakened  not  a  titter  of  sur- 


;  v      THE  WORLD'S  SUGAR  BOWL  103 

prise  among  his  hearers ;  they  had  long  been  used  to  that  custom  un- 
der Spanish  rule. 

The  Cubans  are  always  discussing  politics,  though  the  great  majority 
of  them  have  no  voice  whatever  in  the  government.  To  an  even  greater 
extent  than  with  us  the  best  men  shun  political  office.  The  few  of 
this  class  who  enter  politics  soon  abandon  it  in  disgust  and  to  an  ig- 
norant and  avaricious  clique  are  left  the  spoils.  More  than  one  repre- 
sentative has  learned  to  sign  his  name  after  being  elected.  One  ad- 
mitted in  public  debate  that  he  thought  the  Amazon  was  in  Europe ; 
another  scoffed  at  the  idea  that  Cuba  was  entirely  surrounded  by 
water.  Congressmen  go  to  their  sessions  armed,  and  revolvers  are 
frequently  drawn  during  some  heated  controversy.  Some  of  them 
have  been  known  to  take  advantage  of  the  immunity  from  arrest  to 
refuse  to  pay  their  rent  and  to  make  attacks  upon  women.  A  recent 
president  was  elected  on  a  platform  of  cock-fighting,  a  national  lot- 
tery, and  jai  alai,  this  last  being  the  Basque  game  of  pelota,  at  which 
gambling  flourishes  at  its  best.  The  president  now  in  power  was  ap- 
parently all  that  a  president  should  be  during  the  first  few  months  of 
his  term;  to-day  only  those  on  whom  he  has  showered  favors  have  a 
good  word  for  him.  "  The  Liberal  who  ruled  before  him  was  a 
grafter,"  say  natives  and  foreign  residents  alike,  "  but  at  least  he  let 
other  people  get  theirs,  while  this  man  grabs  everything  for  himself. 
In  other  words  he  is  as  Conservative  as  the  other  was  Liberal."  If 
one  is  to  believe  local  opinion,  Cuba  has  had  but  two  honest  and  efficient 
rulers  since  her  independence,  some  say  in  her  history, —  her  first 
elected  president  and  her  first  American  military  governor.  Love  for 
the  latter  is  almost  universal;  one  frequently  hears  the  assertion  that, 
if  he  could  run  and  honest  elections  could  be  held,  he  would  be  elected 
president  of  Cuba  by  an  overwhelming  majority,  notwithstanding  that 
the  average  Cuban  -does  not  like  the  average  American. 

Graft,  known  in  Cuba  as  "  chivo,"  is  hereditary  in  the  chief  of  the 
West  Indies.  In  olden  days  Spain  looked  upon  Cuba  as  a  legitimate 
source  of  quick  and  easy  gain.  Royal  grants  were  bestowed  upon 
favorites;  titles  and  positions  were  created  as  a  means  of  securing 
all  the  profit  possible.  The  few  years  of  American  rule  did  little  to 
eradicate  this  point  of  view,  and  the  old  idea  still  persists.  Political 
positions  are  treated  quite  frankly  as  opportunities  for  amassing  private 
fortunes,  and  the  man  in  public  life  who  does  not  take  complete  ad- 
vantage of  his  position  is  openly  rated  a  fool.  The  reign  of  "  chivo  " 


IO4 

is  supreme  through  all  the  grades  of  officialdom ;  it  is  not  necessary  to 
seek  examples,  they  are  constantly  thrusting  themselves  upon  the  atten- 
tion. 

Investigation  has  shown  that  half  the  owners  of  private  automo- 
biles and  many  liquor  dealers  have  paid  no  licenses,  but  have  "  fixed 
it  up"  with  the  inspectors.  During  a  recent  hurricane  the  new  sea- 
wall along  the  Malecon  in  Havana  was  totally  wrecked,  though  the  por- 
tion built  during  American  rule  suffered  scarcely  any  damage.  The 
millionaire  Spanish  contractor  had  saved  on  cement  by  giving  part  of 
the  sum  which  should  have  been  spent  for  it  to  those  whose  business 
it  was  to  pass  upon  his  work.  The  director  of  the  national  lottery  made 
enough  in  four  years  to  buy  one  of  the  largest  sugar  centrals  on  the 
island,  and  his  position,  you  may  be  sure,  did  not  come  to  him  gratis. 
A  real  estate  company  offered  to  furnish  the  oil  and  tarvia  if  the  gov- 
ernment of  Havana  would  pave  the  streets  of  a  new  suburb  ;  one  fourth 
of  the  material  was  actually  used  for  that  purpose  and  the  rest  was 
sold  by  the  public  officials.  The  church  is  not  behindhand  in  the  pur- 
suit of  "  chivo."  Priests  demand  fabulous  sums  for  marrying,  and 
advise  the  guajiros  and  laboring  classes  who  cannot  pay  for  the  cere- 
mony to  go  without,  as  thousands  of  families  have  done,  many  of  them 
having  accepted  it  years  later  as  Christmas  presents  to  themselves  and 
their  children  from  American  employers.  During  the  recent  census 
conservative  enumerators  failed  to  enroll  liberal  citizens,  thereby  de- 
priving them  of  the  right  to  vote;  and  if  the  tables  had  been  turned, 
the  only  difference  would  have  been  that  the  other  party  would  have 
lost  their  ballots.  During  the  war  a  chain  was  lowered  each  evening 
across  the  mouth  of  Havana  harbor  as  a  protection  against  submarines ; 
an  English  captain  who  knew  nothing  of  the  new  rule  against  enter- 
ing the  port  at  night  was  arrested  by  a  Cuban  naval  officer  and  then 
told  that  the  matter  could  be  "  fixed  up  "  for  a  twenty-dollar  bill. 

"  Concessions  "  and  "  permits  "  are  the  chief  aids  of  the  "  chivo  "- 
seeker.  Each  morning  six  men  who  have  a  "  concession  "  netting  them 
a  neat  little  sum  for  gathering  the  rubbish  floating  on  the  water  row 
across  the  harbor  and  back  without  touching  the  acres  of  flotsam,  and 
hurry  away  to  their  private  jobs  early  in  the  day.  Havana  has  several 
new  concrete  piers,  but  they  are  not  used  because  of  "  concessions  " 
to  the  owners  of  tumbledown  wharves.  The  same  is  true  of  a  new 
garbage  incinerator ;  lighterage  "  concessions "  cost  fortunes  in  time 
and  money  to  ships  entering  the  harbor.  Nothing  can  be  built  in  Cuba 
without  a  permit.  The  man  who  wishes  to  erect  a  house  in  Havana 


THE  WORLD'S  SUGAR  BOWL  105 

draws  up  his  plans  and  submits  them  to  the  city  architects.  As  often 
as  he  comes  to  get  them,  he  is  informed  that  "  the  man  who  works  on 
these  matters  is  not  here  now,  but " —  and  if  he  takes  the  statement 
at  par,  the  plans  are  placed  at  the  bottom  of  the  pile  again  as  he  leaves ; 
but  if  he  inadvertently  slips  a  greenback  of  large  denomination  among 
them,  the  permit  is  forthcoming  within  twenty-four  hours.  One  must 
have  a  permit  to  make  the  slightest  alterations  in  house  or  office.  An 
American  who  had  secured  a  permission  to  paint  his  house  was 
threatened  with  arrest  for  adding  a  second  coat  without  another  per- 
mit, and  forced  to  "  fix  it  up."  When  he  tried  to  erect  a  fence  he 
found  that  it  could  not  be  constructed  of  wood,  but  ten  dollars  made  the 
inspector  so  blind  that  one  erected  of  that  material  is  represented  on  the 
city  maps  as  made  of  cement  and  iron.  The  man  who  examines  your 
t>aggage  upon  arrival  in  Havana  will  not  pass  it  for  hours  or  even  days 
unless  you  accept  his  offer  to  have  it  transported  to  your  hotel  by  dray- 
men of  his  choosing  and  at  his  price,  and  so  on,  through  all  the  vicis- 
situdes of  life  and  every  branch  of  daily  intercourse.  Like  the  lianas 
and  parasites  which  cling  to  the  trees  of  Cuban  forests,  the  productive 
class  of  the  nation  is  everywhere  supporting  these  useless  hangers-on ; 
and  like  those  giants  of  the  vegetable  world  the  fertility  of  the  island 
makes  it  strong  enough  to  bear  the  burden  without  any  serious  impair- 
ment of  its  health  and  prosperity. 


CHAPTER  V 

UNDER   THE   PALM-TREE   OF   HAITI 

WE  sailed  away  from  Cuba  on  the  Haitian  Navy.  It  hap- 
pened that  the  fleet  in  question  put  into  Guantanamo  Bay 
to  have  something  done  to  her  alleged  engine  at  a  time 
which  happily  coincided  with  our  own  arrival  at  the  eastern  end  of  the 
island.  Otherwise  there  is  no  telling  when  or  how  we  should  have 
made  our  second  jump  down  the  stepping-stones  of  the  West  Indies, 
for  Cuba  and  Haiti  do  not  seem  to  be  particularly  neighborly. 

The  once  proud  Adrea  of  the  New  York  Yacht  Club  is  a  schooner 
of  almost  a  hundred  tons,  and  still  preserves  some  of  her  aristocratic 
features  despite  the  lowly  state  to  which  she  has  fallen  under  her  new 
name  of  L'Independance.  Time  was  when  the  fleet  of  the  Black  Re- 
public boasted  more  than  twice  its  present  strength;  but  the  larger  half 
of  it  was  sold  one  day  to  the  "  slave  trade,"  as  they  still  call  the  carry- 
ing of  negro  laborers  to  the  sugar-mills  of  Cuba,  and  on  the  two  masts 
of  L'Independance  has  fallen  the  entire  burden  of  preserving  the  Hai- 
tian freedom  of  the  seas. 

Eleven  wild  men,  all  of  them,  except  one  yellow  fellow  for  contrast, 
blacker  than  the  shades  of  a  rainy-season  midnight,  made  up  her  crew, 
and  the  deep-blue  and  maroon  flag  of  sovereign  Haiti  flew  at  her  stern. 
But  there  was  a  lighter  tint  superimposed  upon  this  dark  background 
both  of  flag  and  crew.  The  former  bore  the  white  shield  which  an- 
nounces a  white  man  in  command,  and  her  three  officers,  averaging 
the  advanced  age  of  twenty-five,  were  as  Caucasian  as  a  New  Eng- 
land village.  In  real  life  they  were  a  bo's'n  of  the  American  Navy 
and  two  enlisted  men  of  our  far-flung  Marine  Corps,  hailing  from  such 
quaint  corners  of  the  world  as  Cape  Cod,  Toledo,  and  Indianapolis; 
but  in  that  topsyturvy  fairy-world  of  the  West  Indies  they  were  all  first 
lieutenants  of  the  "  Gendarmerie  d'Haiti." 

By  noon  of  a  midsummer  day  in  December  L'Independance  was 
rolling  across  the  Windward  Passage  in  a  way  out  of  all  proportion  to 
her  importance  or  to  the  mere  playfulness  of  the  Caribbean  waves. 

106 


UNDER  THE  PALM-TREE  OF  HAITI  107 

When  morning  broke,  the  two  horns  of  Haiti  loomed  far  to  the  rear 
on  each  horizon,  and  we  had  already  covered  some  two  thirds  of  our 
journey. 

But  not  so  fast,  lest  the  inexperienced  reader  get  too  hasty  and 
optimistic  a  notion  of  wind-wafted  travel.  A  schooner  is  a  most  ro- 
mantic means  of  conveyance  —  when  there  is  something  to  fill  her 
sails.  I  can  imagine  no  greater  punishment  for  American  impatience 
than  to  be  sentenced  to  lie  aimlessly  tossing  through  the  hereafter 
in  tropical  doldrums  where  even  the  fish  scorn  to  bite.  Evidently  the 
winds  within  the  gaping  jaws  of  Haiti  are  as  erratic  as  the  untamable 
race  that  peoples  its  mountainous  shores. 

However,  let  us  avoid  exaggeration.  We  did  move  every  now  and 
then,  sometimes  in  the  right  direction,  occasionally  at  a  spanking  pace 
that  sent  the  blue  waters  foaming  in  two  white  furrows  along  our 
bows.  Yet  the  mountainous  ridges  on  either  hand  crept  past  with 
incredible  leisureliness.  All  through  the  second  night  the  tramp  of 
hurrying  bare  feet  and  the  stentorian  "  French  "  of  the  officers  sounded 
about  the  deck  cots  we  had  preferred  to  the  still  luxurious  cabins  be- 
low —  and  by  sunrise  we  had  covered  nearly  twenty  miles  since  sunset ! 
Gonave  Island,  with  its  alligator  snout,  floated  on  our  starboard  all  that 
day  with  a  persistency  which  suggested  we  were  towing  it  along  with 
us.  Brown  and  seeming  almost  bare  at  this  distance,  it  showed  no  other 
signs  of  life  than  a  few  languid  patches  of  smoke,  which  the  mulatto 
cabin-boy  explained  as  "  Burn  'em  off  an'  then  make  'em  grow."  It 
was  well  that  he  had  picked  up  a  fair  command  of  English  somewhere, 
for  the  mere  fact  that  we  both  prided  ourselves  on  the  fluency  of  our 
French  did  not  help  us  in  any  appreciable  degree  to  carry  on  conversa- 
tion with  the  black  crew.  The  youthful  officers,  with  that  quick  adapta- 
bility which  we  like  to  think  of  as  American,  had  mastered  their  new 
calling  even  to  the-extent  of  acquiring  that  strange  series  of  noises 
which  is  dignified  in  the  French  West  Indies  with  the  name  of 
"  Creole,"  but  it  would  never  have  been  recognized  even  as  a  foster- 
child  on  Parisian  boulevards. 

The  mountainous  northern  peninsula  on  our  port  grew  slightly  more 
variegated  under  an  afternoon  sun  that  gave  the  incredibly  blue  land- 
locked sea  the  suggestion  of  an  over-indigoed  tub  on  wash-day.  The 
peninsula  was  brown,  for  the  most  part,  with  a  wrinkled  and  folded 
surface  that  seemed  to  fall  sheer  from  the  unbroken  summit  into  the 
placid  blue  gulf,  and  only  here  and  there  gleamed  a  little  patch  of 
green.  Yet  it  must  have  been  less  precipitous  than  it  seemed,  for  we 


io8          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

made  out  through  our  glasses  more  than  one  clustered  village  along  the 
hair-line  where  sea  and  mountains  met,  and  now  and  then  a  fishing 
smack  crawling  along  it  put  in  at  some  invisible  cove. 

Before  the  third  day  waned,  our  goal,  Port  au  Prince,  was  dimly 
to  be  seen  with  the  same  assistance,  a  tiny,  whitish,  triangular  speck 
which  seemed  to  stand  upright  at  the  base  of  the  hazy  mountain-wall 
stretching  across  the  world  ahead.  The  wind,  too,  took  on  a  new  life, 
but  it  blew  squarely  in  our  faces,  as  if  bent  on  refusing  us  admittance 
to  our  destination.  The  shore  we  were  seeking  receded  into  the  dusk, 
and  the  men  of  endless  patience  which  sailing-vessels  seem  to  breed 
settled  down  to  battle  through  another  night,  with  little  hope  of  doing 
more  than  avoid  retreat.  We  were  rewarded,  however,  with  another 
of  those  marvelous  West  Indian  sunsets  which  only  a  super-artist  could 
hope  to  picture.  Ragged  handsful  of  clouds,  like  the  scattered  fleece 
of  the  golden-brown  vicuna,  hung  motionless  against  the  background 
of  a  pink-and-blue  streaked  sky,  which  faded  through  all  possible 
shades  to  the  blackening  indigo  of  the  once  more  limitless  sea. 

How  long  the  winds  might  have  prolonged  our  journey  there  is  no 
knowing.  Out  of  the  black  night  behind  us  there  appeared  what  seemed 
a  pulsating  star,  which  gradually  grew  to  unstar-like  size  and  brilliancy. 
Excitement  broke  out  among  the  three  white  mariners.  One  of  them 
snatched  an  electric  lamp  and  flashed  a  few  letters  of  the  Morse  code 
into  the  darkness.  They  were  answered  by  similar  winkings  on  the 
arc  of  the  approaching  star.  This  shifted  its  course  and  bore  down 
upon  us.  The  captain  caught  up  a  megaphone  and  bellowed  into  the 
howling  wind.  The  answer  came  back  in  no  celestial  tongue,  but  in 
a  strangely  familiar  and  earthly  dialect :  "  Hello !  That  you,  Louie  ? 
Tow?  Sure.  Got  a  line,  or  shall  I  pass  you  one?"  A  search-light 
suddenly  revealed  the  navy  of  Haiti  like  a  theatrical  star  in  the  center 
of  the  tossing  stage;  a  submarine-chaser  snorted  alongside  us  with 
American  brevity;  our  sails  dropped  with  a  run,  and  a  few  moments 
later  we  were  scudding  through  the  waves  into  the  very  teeth  of  the 
gale.  When  I  awoke  from  my  next  nap,  L'Independance  was  asleep  at 
anchor  in  a  placid  little  cove. 

Port  au  Prince  is  not,  as  it  appears  from  far  out  in  the  bay,  heaped 
up  at  the  base  of  a  mountain-wall,  but  stretches  leisurely  up  a  gentle, 
but  constant  slope  that  turns  mountainous  well  behind  the  city.  Off  and 
on  through  the  night  we  had  heard  the  muffled  beating  of  tom-toms, 
or  some  equally  artistic  instrument,  and  occasionally  a  care-free  burst 


UNDER  THE  PALM-TREE  OF  HAITI  109 

of  laughter,  that  could  come  only  from  negro  throats,  had  floated  to 
us  across  the  water.  The  first  rays  of  day  showed  us  a  stone's-throw 
from  a  shore  which  the  swift  tropical  dawn  disclosed  as  far  denser  in 
greenery  than  a  Cuban  coast.  The  city  lay  three  miles  away  across 
the  curving  bay.  Two  slender  wireless  poles  and  the  stack  of  a  more 
distant  sugar-mill  stood  out  against  the  mountain-range  behind,  while 
all  else  still  hovered  in  the  haze  of  night.  Then  bit  by  bit,  almost 
swiftly,  the  details  of  the  town  began  to  appear,  like  a  photographic 
plate  in  the  developer.  A  cream-colored,  two-towered  cathedral 
usurped  the  center  of  the  picture ;  whitish,  box-like  houses  spotted  the 
slope  irregularly  all  about  it,  and  the  completed  development  showed 
scores  of  little  hovels  scattered  through  the  dense  greenery  far  up 
the  hillsides  and  along  the  curving  shore.  Then  all  at  once  a  bugle 
sounded,  an  American  bugle  playing  the  old  familiar  reveille,  and  full 
day  popped  forth  as  suddenly  as  if  the  strident  notes  had  summoned 
the  world  to  activity. 

Two  blacks,  manning  the  schooner's  tender,  set  us  ashore  in  the 
Haitian  "  navy-yard,"  a  slender  wooden  pier  along  which  were  moored 
three  American  submarine-chasers.  An  encampment  of  marines  eyed 
us  wonderingly  from  the  doors  of  their  tents  and  wooden  buildings, 
beyond  which  a  gateway  gave  us  entrance  to  a  thoroughly  Haitian  scene. 
A  stony  country  road,  flanked  by  a  toy  railway  line,  was  thronged  with 
the  children  of  Ham.  Negro  women,  with  huge  bundles  of  every 
conceivable  contents  on  their  heads,  pattered  past  with  an  easy-going, 
yet  graceful,  carriage.  Others  sat  sidewise  on  top  of  assorted  loads 
that  half  hid  the  lop-eared  donkeys  beneath  them.  Red  bandanas  and 
turbans  of  other  gay  colors  showed  beneath  absurdly  broad  palm-leaf 
hats.  Black  feet,  with  the  remnants  of  a  slipper  balancing  on  the 
toes  of  each,  waved  with  the  pace  of  the  diminutive  animals.  The 
riders  could  scarcely  have  been  called  well  dressed,  but  they  were  im- 
maculate compared"  with  the  throngs  of  foot  travelers.  A  few  scat- 
tered patches  of  rags,  dirty  beyond  description,  hung  about  the  black 
bodies  they  made  no  serious  effort  to  conceal.  Men  in  straggly  Na- 
poleon III  beards  clutched  every  few  steps  at  the  shreds  which  posed 
as  trousers.  Stark  naked  urchins  pattered  along  through  the  dust; 
more  of  them  scampered  about  under  the  palm-trees.  Bare  feet  were 
as  general  as  African  features.  More  than  one  group  sidled  crabwise 
to  the  edge  of  the  road  as  we  advanced  and  gazed  behind  them  with 
a  startled  expression  at  the  strange  sound  made  by  our  shod  feet. 
Scores  of  the  most  primitive  huts  imaginable,  many  of  them  leaning 


i io          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

at  what  seemed  precarious  angles,  lined  the  way.  Before  almost  all 
of  them  stood  a  little  "  shop,"  a  few  horizontal  sticks  raised  off  the 
ground  by  slender  poles  and  shaded  by  a  cluster  of  brown  palm-leaves. 
Vacant-faced  negro  men  and  women,  none  of  them  boasting  a  real 
garment,  tended  the  establishments  squatting  or  lolling  in  the  patches  of 
shade  which  the  early  morning  sun  cast  well  out  into  the  roadway. 
The  stock  in  trade  of  the  best  of  them  would  not  have  filled  a  market- 
basket.  A  cluster  of  bananas;  a  few  oranges,  small,  but  yellower 
than  those  of  Cuba ;  bedraggled-looking  alligator-pears ;  dust-covered 
loaves  of  bread,  no  larger  than  biscuits,  made  up  the  most  imposing  ar- 
rays. Many  of  the  "  merchants  "  had  not  advanced  to  the  stick-counter 
stage,  but  spread  their  wares  on  the  ground  —  little  handsful  of  tiny 
red  beans  laid  at  regular  intervals  along  a  banana-leaf,  similar  heaps 
of  unroasted  coffee,  bundles  of  fagots,  tied  with  strips  of  leaf,  that 
could  easily  have  gone  into  a  coat-pocket.  Now  and  again  some  black 
ragamuffin  paused  to  open  negotiations  with  the  lolling  shopkeepers, 
who  carried  on  the  transaction,  if  possible,  from  where  they  lay,  ris- 
ing to  their  feet  only  when  the  heat  of  the  bargaining  demanded  it. 
The  smallness  of  each  purchase  was  amusing,  as  well  as  indicative  of 
Haitian  poverty.  One  orange,  a  single  banana,  a  measureful  of  a 
coarse,  reddish  meal  tinier  than  the  smallest  glass  of  a  bartender's  para- 
phernalia, were  the  usual  amounts,  and  the  pewter  coins  that  exchanged 
owners  were  seldom  of  the  value  of  a  whole  cent.  With  rare  excep- 
tions the  purchasers  wolfed  at  once  what  they  had  bought  as  they  pat- 
tered on  down  the  road. 

Details  came  so  thick  and  fast  that  it  was  impossible  to  catch  them  all, 
even  with  a  kodak.  Compared  with  this,  Cuba,  after  all,  had  been 
little  more  than  semi-tropical.  Here  the  vegetation,  the  odors,  the  very 
atmosphere  were  of  the  genuine  tropics.  Breadfruit-trees,  with  their 
scolloped  leaves,  which  we  had  never  seen  in  the  larger  island  to  the 
westward,  shouldered  their  way  upward  among  the  cocoanut-palms. 
Mango-trees,  as  dense  as  haystacks,  cast  their  black  shadows  over  the 
rampant  undergrowth.  But  always  the  eyes  came  back  to  the  swarms 
of  black  people,  with  their  festoons  of  rags  contrasting  with,  rather 
than  covering,  their  coal-tinted  bodies.  Wrhat  might  have  seemed  a 
long  walk  under  a  tropical  sun  became  a  short  stroll  amid  this  first 
glimpse  of  an  astonishingly  primitive  humanity. 

For  all  their  poverty,  the  inhabitants  seemed  to  be  frankly  happy 
with  life.  They  had  the  playfulness  of  children,  with  frequent  howls  of 
full-throated  laughter;  they  seemed  no  more  self-conscious  at  the  super- 


IWDER  THE  PALM-TREE  OF  HAITI  in 

tattered  state  of  their  garments  than  were  the  ambling,  over-laden 
donkeys  at  the  ludicrous  patchiness  of  their  trappings.  That  lack  of 
the  sense  of  personal  dignity  characteristic  of  the  African  came  to  their 
rescue  in  the  abjectness  of  their  condition.  For  they  were  African,  as 
thoroughly  so  as  the  depths  of  the  Congo.  We  had  strolled  for  an 
hour,  and  reached  the  very  edge  of  the  city  itself,  before  we  met  not 
a  white  man,  but  the  first  face  that  showed  any  admixture  of  Caucasian 
blood.  Compared  with  this  callous-footed  throng  the  hodgepodge  of 
Cuban  complexions  seemed  almost  European. 

As  we  neared  the  town,  a  train  as  primitive  as  the  scene  about  us 
chattered  round  a  bend  in  the  tunnel  of  vegetation,  the  front  of  its 
first-model  engine  swinging  like  the  trunk  of  an  excited  elephant.  The 
four  open,  wooden  cars  that  swayed  and  screamed  along  behind  it  were 
densely  packed  with  passengers,  yet  even  here  there  was  not  a  white 
face.  The  diminutive  tender  was  piled  high  with  cordwood  little 
larger  than  fagots,  and  the  immense,  squatty  smokestack  was  spitting 
red  coals  over  all  the  surrounding  landscape.  As  the  train  passed,  the 
negro  women  along  the  road  sprang  with  a  flurry  of  their  ragged  skirts 
upon  the  track  and  fell  to  picking  up  what  we  took  to  be  coins  scat- 
tered by  some  inexplicably  generous  passenger.  Closer  investigation 
showed  that  they  were  snatching  up  live  coals  with  which  to  light 
the  little  brown  clay  pipes  which  give  them  a  flitting  resemblance  to 
Irish  peasants. 

A  lower-class  market  was  in  full  swing  in  a  dust-carpeted  patch  of 
ground  on  the  city  water-front.  Here  the  wares  were  more  varied  than 
in  the  roadside  "  shops,"  but  sold  in  the  same  minute  portions.  Ameri- 
can safety-matches  were  offered  not  by  the  box,  but  in  bundles  of  six 
matches  each,  tied  with  strips  of  leaf.  Here  were  "  butcher-shops," 
consisting  of  a  wooden  trough  full  of  meat,  which  owed  its  preserva- 
tion to  a  thorough  cooking,  and  was  sold  by  the  shred  and  consumed  on 
the  spot.  Scrawny,  black  hags,  who  had  tramped  who  knows  how  many 
miles  over  mountain-trails  with  an  ox-load  of  oranges  or  coarse  tubers 
on  their  heads,  squatted  here  all  the  morning  selling  a  pennyworth  of 
their  wares  at  a  time,  the  whole  totaling  perhaps  forty  cents,  to  be 
squandered  for  some  product  of  civilization  which  they  would  carry 
home  in  the  same  laborious  fashion.  The  minority  of  the  women 
venders  had  come  on  donkeys  and  were  frank  in  impressing  upon 
their  more  lowly  sisters  the  aristocracy  which  this  sign  of  wealth  and 
leisure  conferred  upon  them.  A  native  gendarme,  dressed  in  a  cheap- 
looking  imitation  of  the  uniform  of  our  own  marines,  but  as  African 


112          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

of  soul  beneath  it  as  the  most  naked  of  his  fellow-citizens,  strutted 
back  and  forth  through  the  throngs  of  clamorous  bargainers.  Now 
and  again,  when  a  group  grew  too  large  for  his  liking,  he  charged  into 
it,  waving  a  long  stick  and  striking  viciously  at  the  legs  and  backs  of 
all  within  reach,  irrespective  of  sex  or  age.  Far  from  fighting  back 
or  even  showing  resentment,  the  childlike  blacks  fled  before  him,  often 
with  shrieks  of  laughter.  Ours  were  the  only  white  faces  within  the 
inclosure,  yet  we  were  given  passage  everywhere  with  an  unostentatious 
consideration  that  in  less  primitive  societies  would  be  called  extreme 
courtesy. 

Beggars  as  inhumanly  sunk  in  degradation  as  the  lowest  pariahs  of 
India  shuffled  in  and  out,  mutely  holding  forth  filthy  tin  cups  to  those 
barely  a  degree  above  them  in  want  and  misery.  Near  the  gate  a 
seething  crowd  was  collected  around  a  pushcart  filled  with  tin  cans  of 
all  sizes,  tumbled  pellmell  together  just  as  they  had  been  slashed  open 
and  tossed  aside  by  a  marine  mess  orderly.  An  old  woman  was  selling 
them  to  eager  purchasers,  who  looked  them  over  with  the  deliberate 
care  one  might  give  an  automobile  offered  for  sale,  parted  at  length 
with  the  price  agreed  upon,  after  long  and  vociferous  negotiations,  and 
wandered  away  gloating  over  the  beauty  of  their  new  acquisition,  some 
of  them  talking  to  it  in  their  incomprehensible  "  French."  The  prices 
varied  from  "cinq  cob"  (5  centimes,  or  I  cent)  for  a  recent  container 
of  jam  or  pork  and  beans  to  a  gourde  (twenty  cents)  or  more  for  the 
five-gallon  gasolene  tins  that  make  such  splendid  water  buckets  on  the 
head  of  the  Haitian  women.  In  another  corner  was  arranged  in  the 
dust  a  display  of  bottles  of  every  conceivable  size,  shape,  and  previous 
occupation,  from  three-sided  pickle  flasks  to  empty  beer  bottles,  con- 
stituting the  entire  stock  in  trade  of  two  incredibly  ragged  females. 
Scarcely  a  scrap  or  remnant,  even  of  things  which  we  hire  men  to 
carry  to  the  garbage  heap,  but  had  its  value  to  this  poverty-stricken 
throng.  Particularly  was  anything  whatever  resembling  cloth  made 
use  of  to  the  utmost  end  of  its  endurance.  One  of  the  best  dressed 
of  the  pulsating  collection  of  tatters  was  a  powerful  black  fellow  who 
strutted  about  in  a  two-piece  suit  fashioned  from  unbleached  muslin 
that  had  entered  upon  its  second  term  of  servitude.  Unlike  those  of  his 
fellows,  both  garments  were  whole,  except  for  one  three-cornered  rent 
in  what,  to  a  less  self-confident  being,  would  have  been  an  embarrassing 
position.  Diagonally  across  the  trousers,  just  above  this  vent,  blazed 
the  word  "  Eventually,"  and  below  it  the  pertinent  query,  "  Why  not 
now?" 


UNDER  THE  PALM-TREE  OF  HAITI  113 

The  American  residents  of  Port  au  Prince  complain  that  visitors  of 
scribbling  propensities  have  given  too  much  space  to  its  comic-opera 
aspect.  It  is  hard  to  avoid  temptation.  The  ridiculous  is  constantly 
forcing  itself  into  the  foreground,  innocently  unaware  of  distracting 
attention  from  the  more  serious  background.  For  there  is  such  a  back- 
ground, one  which  should  in  all  fairness  be  sketched  into  any  picture  of 
Haiti  which  makes  a  pretense  of  being  true  to  life.  If  there  has  been 
a  constant  tendency  to  leave  it  out,  it  is  probably  due  to  the  fact  that 
the  average  wanderer  over  the  face  of  the  earth  finds  most  "  interest- 
ing "  the  incongruous  and  the  ludicrous. 

To  close  our  eyes,  then,  for  the  moment  to  the  more  obvious  details, 
the  capital  of  the  Black  Republic  is  by  no  means  the  misplaced  African 
village  which  common  report  would  indicate.  Its  principal  streets  are 
excellently  paved  with  asphalt ;  scores  of  automobiles  honk  their  way 
through  its  seething  streams  of  black  humanity.  Even  along  the  water- 
front the  principles  of  sanitation  are  enforced.  Barefooted  "  white 
wings,"  distinguished  by  immense  green  hats  of  woven  palm-leaves 
worn  on  top  of  their  personal  headgear,  are  constantly  sweeping  the 
city  with  their  primitive  bundle-of-grass  brooms.  A  railroad,  incred- 
ibly old-fashioned,  to  be  sure,  but  accommodating  a  crowded  traffic 
for  all  that,  runs  through  the  heart  of  the  town  and  connects  it  with 
others  considerable  distances  away  in  both  directions.  An  excellent 
electric  light  service  covers  the  city.  Its  shops  make  a  more  or  less 
successful  effort  to  ape  their  Parisian  prototypes;  its  business  offices 
by  no  means  all  succumb  to  the  tropical  temptation  to  sleep  through  the 
principal  hours  of  the  day.  The  French  left  it  a  legacy  of  wide  streets, 
though  failing,  of  course,  to  bequeath  it  adequate  sidewalks.  Its  archi- 
tecture is  a  surprise  to  the  traveler  arriving  from  Cuba;  it  would  be 
far  less  so  to  one  who  came  direct  from  Key  West.  Wooden  houses 
with  sloping  roofs  are  the  general  rule,  thin-walled  structures  with  huge 
slatted  doors  and  windows,  and  built  as  open  as  possible  to  every  breeze 
that  blows,  as  befits  the  climate.  There  are  neither  red  tiles,  strangely 
tinted  walls,  nor  Moorish  rejas  and  patios  to  attract  the  eye.  Indeed, 
there  is  little  or  nothing  in  the  average  street  vista  to  arouse  the  admira- 
tion, though  there  is  a  certain  cause  for  amusement  in  the  strange  juxta- 
position of  the  most  primitive  African  reed  huts  with  the  attempts  of 
Paris-educated  mulattoes  to  ape,  with  improvements  of  their  own,  their 
favorite  French  chateaux. 

Only  two  buildings  in  Port  au  Prince  —  one  might  perhaps  say  in  all 
Haiti  —  boast  window-glass.  One  is  the  large  and  rather  imposing 


U4          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

cathedral,  light  yellow  both  outside  and  within,  flooded  with  the  aggres- 
sive tropical  sunshine  in  a  way  that  leaves  it  none  of  the  "  dim  and  mystic 
light  "  befitting  such  places  of  worship.  The  other  is  the  unfinished, 
snow-white  presidential  palace,  larger  and  more  sumptuous  than  our  own 
White  House.  The  cathedral  looks  down  upon  the  blue  harbor  across 
a  great  open  square  unadorned  with  a  single  sprig  of  vegetation ;  the 
palace  squats  in  the  vast  sun-scorched  Champs  de  Mars,  equally  bare 
except  for  a  Napoleonic  statue  of  Dessalines,  his  telltale  complexion 
disguised  by  the  kindly  bronze,  and  attended  by  a  modest  and  deeply 
tanned  Venus  of  Melos.  The  absence  of  trees  in  the  public  squares 
gives  assistance  to  the  wooden  houses  in  proving  the  city  no  offshoot  of 
Spanish  civilization.  The  tale  runs  that  the  Champs  de  Mars  was  once 
well  wooded  until  a  former  president  ordered  it  cleared  of  all  possible 
lurking-places  for  assassins. 

But  Port  an  Prince  is  by  no  means  unshaded.  The  better  residential 
part  up  beyond  the  glaring  parade-ground  makes  full  use  of  the  gor- 
geous tropical  vegetation.  Here  almost  every  house  is  hidden  away  in 
its  grove  of  palms,  mangos,  breadfruit,  and  a  score  of  other  perennial 
trees,  and  flowering  bushes,  ranging  all  the  way  from  our  northern 
roses  to  the  pale-yellow  of  blooming  cotton-trees  and  enormous  masses 
of  the  lavender-purple  bougainvillea,  crowd  their  way  in  between  the 
tree-trunks.  Oranges,  bananas,  and  the  pear-shaped  grape-fruit  of 
Haiti  hang  almost  within  reach  from  one's  window ;  alligator-pears 
may  be  had  in  their  season  for  the  flinging  of  a  club ;  he  who  cares  to 
climb  high  enough  can  quench  his  thirst  with  the  cool  water  of  the 
green  cocoanut.  The  dwellings  here  are  spacious  and  airy,  their  ceil- 
ings almost  double  the  height  of  our  own,  and  if  they  lack  some  of  the 
conveniences  considered  indispensable  in  the  North,  they  have  instead 
splendid  swimming-pools  and,  in  many  cases,  such  a  view  of  the  lower 
city,  the  intensely  blue  bay,  and  the  wrinkled  brown  ranges  of  the 
southern  peninsula  as  would  make  up  for  a  far  greater  scarcity  of 
the  stereotyped  comforts. 

It  is  a  leisurely,  but  constant,  climb  from  the  water-front  to  these 
forest-embowered  dwellings.  Port  au  Prince  is  not  blessed  with  a 
street-car  system,  and  its  medieval  railroad  staggers  only  to  the  upper 
edge  of  the  Champs  de  Mars.  Moreover,  the  painted  drygoods-boxes 
on  wheels  are  invariably  so  densely  crammed  with  full-scented  blacks 
that  not  only  the  white  residents,  but  even  the  haughty  yellow  ones, 
rarely  deign  to  patronize  the  spark-spitting  conveyance.  Long-estab- 
lished families  have  their  private  carriages ;  the  parvenus  from  foreign 


UNDER  THE  PALM-TREE  OF  HAITI  115 

lands  own,  borrow,  or  share  automobiles;  mere  clerks  and  bookkeepers 
jog  homeward  on  their  diminutive  Haitian  ponies ;  and  chance  visitors 
trust  to  luck  and  the  oily-cushioned  wrecks  that  ply  for  hire,  finishing 
the  journey  on  foot  from  the  point  where  the  bony  and  moth-eaten  cari- 
cature of  a  horse  refuses  longer  to  respond  to  the  lashings  and  screams 
of  the  tar-complexioned  driver.  Fortunately,  it  is  perfectly  good 
form  to  "  catch  a  ride  "  with  any  car-owning  member  of  one's  own 
race. 

Let  me  not  leave  the  impression,  however,  that  the  majority  of  those 
who  ascend  the  city  depend  on  gasolene  or  horseflesh.  At  least  two 
thirds  of  them  walk,  but  it  is  the  two  thirds  that  do  not  count  in  polite 
parlance.  All  day  long,  though  far  more  incessantly,  of  course,  in  the 
delightful  coolness  of  early  morning  or  the  velvety  air  of  evening, 
processions  of  black  people  of  varying  degrees  of  raggedness  plod 
noiselessly  up  and  down  the  stony  streets  of  the  upper  town.  Noise- 
lessly, that  is,  only  in  their  barefooted  tread ;  their  tongues  are  rarely 
silent,  and  frequent  cackles  of  unrestrained  laughter  sound  from  the 
bundles  beneath  which  their  woolly  heads  are  all  but  invariably  buried. 
For  be  it  large  or  small,  a  mahogany  chest  of  drawers  or  a  tin  can  three 
inches  in  diameter,  the  Haitian  always  bears  his  burdens  on  his  head. 
Her  head  would  be  more  nearly  the  exact  truth  of  the  rtise,  for  the 
women  rarely  permit  their  lords  and  masters  to  subject  themselves  to 
the  indignity  of  toil.  But  the  merest  child  of  the  burden-bearing  sex 
is  rarely  seen  abroad  except  under  a  load  that  gives  her  the  appearance 
of  the  stem  of  a  toadstool.  Some  of  these  uncomplaining  females 
serve  the  more  fortunate  residents  of  the  hill;  most  of  them  trot  to  and 
fro  between  the  market  and  the  tiny  thatched  cabins  sprinkled  far  up 
the  range  behind  the  city  like  rice  grains  on  a  green  banana  leaf. 
Where  the  streets  break  up  beyond  the  last  man's-size  dwellings,  nar- 
row trails  tunnel  on  jap  through  the  prolific  greenery  to  these  scattered 
huts  of  the  real  Haitian,  among  which  it  is  easy  to  imagine  oneself 
in  the  heart  of  Africa. 

Five  years  ago  there  were  barely  a  score  of  white  men  in  Port  au 
Prince,  and  not  many  more  than  that  in  all  Haiti.  To-day  there  are 
perhaps  three  hundred  American  residents,  without  counting  a  large 
force  of  occupation  and  their  families,  and  to  say  nothing  of  a  con- 
siderable sprinkling  of  French,  the  remnants  of  what  was  a  flourishing 
German  colony  until  an  epidemic  of  internment  fell  upon  it,  and  a 
scattering  of  Italian,  Syrian,  and  similar  tradesmen.  The  Americans 
of  the  first  category  are  carrying  on  or  opening  up  new  enterprises 


ii6          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

that  promise  to  offer  Haiti  a  prosperity  not  even  second  to  that  of 
Cuba.  No  one  who  has  visited  the  island  can  question  the  extraor- 
dinary fertility  of  its  soil.  The  overwhelming  portion  of  it  is  as  virgin 
as  if  the  French  had  never  exploited  what  was  once  the  richest  of  their 
colonies;  revolutions  have  become,  by  force  majeure,  a  thing  of  the 
past.  Every  new  undertaking  must,  to  be  sure,  be  built  or  rebuilt 
from  the  ground  up.  During  their  more  than  a  century  of  freedom 
the  negoes  have  done  nothing  but  destroy.  They  have  not  even  exer- 
cised their  one  faculty,  that  of  imitation,  for  they  have  been  too  much 
shut  off  from  the  rest  of  the  world  to  find  anything  to  imitate.  Though 
the  sugar-cane  was  introduced  into  Cuba  by  the  French  refugees  from 
Haiti,  the  entire  country  cannot  at  present  compete  with  the  largest 
single  sugar-mill  in  the  prosperous  island  to  the  west.  The  Haitian 
laborer  has  lost  all  knowledge  of  the  sugar-making  process  except  his 
own  primitive  method  of  producing  rapadoue.  He  must  be  taught  all 
over  again,  and  he  is  not  a  particularly  apt  pupil;  moreover,  complain 
the  men  who  are  striving  to  make  Haiti  bloom  once  more  with  cane, 
no  sooner  is  he  taught  than  the  Cuban  planters  entice  him  across  the 
Windward  Passage  with  wages  ten  times  as  high  as  he  receives  at  home. 
But  capital  is  beginning  to  recognize  that  despite  its  obvious  draw- 
backs Haiti  Coffers  a  rich  future,  and  several  syndicates  have  already 
"  got  in  on  the  ground  floor." 

The  American  residents  of  Port  au  Prince,  men,  women,  and  chil- 
dren, swear  by  it.  I  have  yet  to  meet  one  who  is  eager  to  leave ;  many 
of  those  who  go  north  for  extended  vacations  cut  them  short  with  a 
cry  of  "  take  me  back  to  Haiti."  To  the  misinformed  northerner  its 
very  name  is  synonymous  with  revolution  and  sudden  death.  Outside 
the  field  of  romance  there  is  about  as  much  danger  of  meeting  with 
violence  from  the  natives  as  there  is  of  being  boiled  in  oil  at  a  church 
"  sociable."  There  is  not  a  deadly  representative  of  the  animal  or 
vegetable  kingdom  on  the  island;  except  for  some  malarial  regions  of 
rather  mild  danger  the  climate  is  as  healthful  as  that  of  the  best  state 
in  our  union  —  with  due  regard,  of  course,  to  the  invariable  rule  that 
white  women  should  season  their  residence  with  an  occasional  invigorat- 
ing breath  of  the  north.  The  Americans  have  acquired  one  by  one, 
as  some  yellow  politician  has  lost  his  grasp  on  the  national  treasury, 
the  grove-hidden  houses  in  the  upper  town,  some  of  them  little  short 
of  palatial.  There  they  live  like  the  potentates  of  the  tropical  isles 
of  romance.  The  blacks  are  respectful,  childlike  in  their  manner,  and 
have  much  of  the  docility  of  the  negroes  of  our  South  before  the  Civil 


UNDER  THE  PALM-TREE  OF  HAITI  117 

War.  They  work  for  wages  which,  as  wages  go  nowadays,  are  less 
than  a  song.  House  servants  receive  from  five  to  eight  dollars  a  month, 
and  the  one  meal  a  day  to  which  the  masses  have  long  been  accustomed 
rarely  costs  a  twenty-cent  gourde.  Families  who  could  scarcely  afford 
the  luxury  of  a  single  "  hired  girl "  in  the  land  of  their  birth  keep  five 
servants  in  Haiti,  a  cook,  butler,  up-stairs  maid,  laundress,  and  yard 
boy;  for  the  Haitian  is  strictly  limited  in  his  versatility,  and  the  cook 
could  no  more  serve  a  dinner  than  a  laundress  could  give  the  yard  its 
daily  sweeping.  They  are  usually  stupid  beyond  words,  with  the 
mentality  of  an  intelligent  child  of  six,  but  they  are  sometimes  capable 
of  great  devotion,  with  a  dog-like  quality  of  faithfulness ;  and  between 
them  all  they  swathe  the  existence  of  their  masters  in  the  comfort  of  an 
old-time  Southern  plantation.  All  this  is  but  half  the  story  of  content- 
ment with  Haitian  residence,  for  the  mere  fact  that  the  sun  is  certain 
to  break  forth  in  all  the  splendor  of  a  cloudless  sky  as  sure  as  the 
morning  comes  round  is  sufficient  to  make  the  cold  and  dismal  north 
seem  a  prison  by  comparison. 

There  is  a  certain  amount  of  friction  between  the  several  classes 
of  Americans  in  Port  au  Prince,  not  to  mention  heroic  efforts  in  "  keep- 
ing up  with  Lizzie."  Ten-course  dinners  with  all  the  formality  and 
ostentation  which  go  with  them  are  of  daily  occurrence ;  "  bridge " 
flourishes  by  day  and  by  night,  with  far  from  humble  stakes,  and  dances, 
whether  at  the  American  Club  or  in  private  houses,  are  not  conspicuous 
for  their  simplicity.  The  two  things  go  together,  of  course;  it  is  of 
little  use  to  disagree  with  a  man  if  you  cannot  prove  yourself  his 
equal  by  "  putting  up  as  good  a  front "  as  he  does.  Roughly  speak- 
ing, our  fellow-countrymen  in  the  Haitian  capital  may  be  divided  into 
four  classes,  though  there  are  further  ramifications  and  certain  points 
of  contact.  Each  class  has  its  own  faults  and  virtues,  and  comes 
naturally  by  them.  The  half  dozen  civilian  officials  who  hold  the  chief 
offices  of  our  "  advfsory "  share  in  the  civil  government  have  in  too 
many  cases  been  chosen  for  their  political  standing  rather  than  for 
their  ability  or  experience  in  such  tasks  as  that  they  are  facing.  The 
navy  and  the  marine  officers,  between  whom  a  rift  now  and  then  shows 
itself,  have  the  characteristics  of  the  military  calling  the  world  over. 
They  are  by  nature  direct  and  autocratic,  rather  than  persuasive  and 
tactful;  they  have  an  almost  childish  petulance  at  any  fancied  slight 
to  their  rank,  which  does  not  make  it  easy  for  them  to  cooperate  with 
the  civilian  officials.  Of  their  efficiency  in  their  chosen  profession  there 
is  no  question,  but  our  policy  of  assigning  them  to  administrative  posi- 


ii8          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

tions  simply  because  they  are  already  on  the  national  pay-roll  and  ex- 
pecting them  to  shine  in  tasks  which  call  for  a  lifetime  of  training 
quite  opposite  to  that  they  have  received  has  its  drawbacks.  The  very 
qualities  which  make  for  success  in  pacifying  the  country  hamper  them 
in  dealing  with  the  better  class  of  natives,  who  are,  to  be  sure,  negroes, 
yet  who  have  the  sensitive  French  temperament  and  are  much  more 
amenable  to  persuasion  than  to  bullying.  By  chance  or  design  the 
great  majority  of  our  officers  in  Haiti  are  Southerners,  and  they 
naturally  shun  any  but  the  most  unavoidable  intercourse  with  the 
natives.  This  is  one  of  the  chief  bones  of  contention  between  the  forces 
of  occupation  and  the  American  civilians  engaged  in  business.  The 
latter,  while  still  keeping  a  color-line,  contend  that  the  natives  of  edu- 
cation should  be  treated  more  like  human  beings.  They  deplore  the 
narrow  viewpoint,  the  indifference  to  industrial  advancement,  the  occa- 
sional schoolboy  priggishness  of  the  officers,  and  the  latter  retaliate 
by  considering  the  term  business  man  as  synonymous  with  money- 
grabbing  and  willingness  to  cater  to  the  natives  for  the  sake  of  trade. 
Not  that  these  differences  cause  open  rifts  in  the  American  ranks,  but 
the  atmosphere  is  always  more  or  less  charged  with  them.  The  native 
of  education,  on  his  side,  resents  the  whole  American  attitude  on  the 
race  question,  and  not  wholly  without  reason.  The  color-line  is  justifi- 
able in  so  far  as  it  protects  against  intermingling  of  blood,  character- 
istics, and  habits,  but  there  is  a  point  beyond  which  it  becomes  d  —  d 
foolishness,  and  that  point  is  sometimes  passed  by  our  officers  in  Haiti. 
After  all,  the  Haitians  won  their  independence  without  our  assistance, 
and  to  a  certain  extent  they  are  entitled  to  what  they  call  their  dignite 
personelle.  The  Southerner  is  famed  for  his  ability  to  keep  the 
"  nigger  "  down,  but  he  is  less  successful  in  lifting  him  up,  and  that  is 
the  task  we  have  taken  upon  ourselves  in  Haiti. 

As  every  American  should  know,  but  as  a  great  many  even  of  those 
who  pride  themselves  on  keeping  abreast  of  the  times  do  not,  Haiti 
has  been  an  American  protectorate  since  the  summer  of  1915.  There 
is  a  native  government,  to  be  sure,  ranging  all  the  ebony  way  from 
president  to  village  clerks,  but  if  it  functions  efficiently,  and  to  a  certain 
degree  it  does,  it  is  thanks  to  a  few  hundred  of  our  own  marines  and 
certain  representatives  of  our  navy.  How  this  strange  state  of  affairs, 
so  contrary  to  the  forgiving  spirit  of  the  present  administration,  came 
about  is  a  story  brief  and  interesting  enough  to  be  worth  the  telling. 

The  Spanish  discoverers  —  for  one  must  be  permitted  a  running 


UNDER  THE  PALM-TREE  OF  HAITI  119 

start  if  one  is  to  race  through  the  reeking  fields  of  Haitian  history  — 
soon  wiped  out  the  native  Indian  population  in  their  usual  genial,  but 
thorough,  way.  Fields  will  not  plant,  or  at  least  cultivate,  themselves, 
however,  even  in  so  astonishingly  fertile  a  land  as  the  island  that 
embraces  the  republics  of  Haiti  and  Santo  Domingo.  Hence  the 
Frenchmen  to  whom  the  western  end  of  the  island  eventually  fell,  after 
varying  vicissitudes,  followed  the  custom  of  the  time  and  repopulated 
the  colony  with  negro  slaves.  Prosperity  reigned  for  a  century  or 
more.  There  are  still  jungle-grown  ruins  of  many  an  old  French 
plantation  mansion  to  be  found  not  merely  within  the  very  boundaries 
of  the  Port  au  Prince  of  to-day,  but  in  regions  that  have  long  since 
reverted  to  primeval  wilderness.  Unfortunately,  for  the  French  at 
least,  the  slave-traders'  supplied  this  particular  market  with  members  of 
some  of  Africa's  more  warlike  tribes,  the  descendants  of  whom,  taking 
the  theories  of  the  French  Revolution  an  pied  de  la  lettre,  concluded  to 
abolish  their  masters.  Under  a  genuine  military  genius  with  the  blood 
of  African  chieftains  in  his  veins,  one  Toussaint  1'Ouverture,  and  his 
equally  black  successor,  Dessalines,  the  slaves  defeated  what  was  in 
those  days  a  large  French  army,  commanded  by  the  brother-in-law  of 
the  great  Napoleon,  and  drove  the  French  from  the  island.  New 
Orleans  and  Philadelphia  received  most  of  the  refugees,  whose  family 
names  are  still  to  be  found  in  the  directories  of  those  cities.  Except 
for  a  few  persons  the  French  never  returned,  and  Haiti  has  been 
"  the  Black  Republic  "  since  1804. 

The  result  was  about  what  our  Southern  statesmen  would  have 
prophesied.  In  theory  the  government  of  Haiti  is  modeled  on  that  of 
France;  in  practice  it  has  been  the  plaything  of  a  long  line  of  military 
dictators  of  varying  degrees  of  color  and  virtually  all  rising  to  power 
and  sinking  into  oblivion  —  usually  of  the  grave  —  on  the  heels  of 
swiftly  succeeding  revolutions.  There  have  been  a  few  well-meaning 
men  among  them,  the  last  of  whom,  named  Leconte,  was  blown  up  in 
1912,  palace  and  all.  Most  of  them  were  interested  only  in  playing 
Caesar,  or,  more  exactly,  Nero,  over  their  black  fellow-citizens  until  the 
time  came  to  loot  the  national  treasury  and  flee,  a  program  which  was 
frequently  cut  short  by  appalling  sudden  death.  The  detailed  recital 
of  more  than  a  century  of  violence,  of  constant  bloody  differences 
between  the  mulattoes  and  the  genuine  blacks,  would  be  a  tale  too  long 
for  the  modern  reader. 

In  1915  the  presidency  was  occupied  by  a  particularly  offensive  black 
brother  named  Guillaume  Sam.  Though  it  has  not  been  so  recorded, 


120          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

Sam's  middle  name  was  evidently  Trouble.  Foreign  war-ships  took 
to  dropping  in  on  Port  au  Prince  and  demanding  the  payments  of 
debts  to  foreigners.  Up  in  the  northern  peninsula,  as  usual  in  mango- 
time,  when  the  trees  of  the  island  constitute  a  commissary,  revolution 
broke  out.  and,  to  top  off  his  woes,  Sam  was  busy  marrying  off  his 
daughter  and  installing  her  in  a  new  palace.  In  his  wrath  at  being 
disturbed  at  such  a  time  Sam  passed  the  word  to  his  chief  jailer  to 
clean  out  the  penitentiary,  some  of  the  political  prisoners  in  which 
were  no  doubt  in  sympathy  with  the  revolutionists,  but  many  of  whom 
were  there  merely  because  they  had  aroused  the  personal  enmity  of 
Sam,  or  some  of  his  cronies.  The  sentence  was  carried  out  more  like 
a  rabbit-hunt  than  an  execution.  In  an  orgie  in  which  the  primitive 
instincts  of  the  African  had  full  play  the  two  hundred  or  more  prisoners 
were  butchered  in  circumstances  better  imagined  than  described. 
Among  them  were  many  members  of  the  "  best  families  "  of  Port  au 
Prince.  It  is  not  recorded  that  any  of  this  class  took  personal  part  in 
the  revenge  that  followed,  but  they  undoubtedly  instigated  it.  The 
rank  and  file  of  the  town,  those  same  more  or  less  naked  blacks  who 
are  ordinarily  docile  and  childlike,  surrounded  the  palace.  Sam  had 
taken  refuge  in  the  French  legation.  For  the  first  time  even  in  the 
turbid  history  of  Haiti,  the  sanctuary  of  a  foreign  ministry  was  violated 
by  the  voodoo-maddened  mob.  Sam  was  dragged  out,  cut  to  pieces, 
and  tossed  into  the  bay.  Then  our  marines  landed  and,  to  use  their 
own  words,  "  the  stuff  was  all  over." 

American  control  is  due  to  continue  for  at  least  twenty  years  from 
that  date.  A  treaty  drawn  up  soon  after  the  landing  of  our  forces, 
and  subsequently  renewed,  provides  for  the  form  under  which  our 
"  assistance  "  shall  be  exercised,  as  well  as  specifying  the  time  limit. 
An  American  financial  adviser,  who  is  far  more  than  that  in  practice, 
an  American  receiver  of  customs,  and  heads  of  the  engineering  and 
sanitation  departments,  are  required  by  the  terms  thereof,  and  the  final 
decision  in  most  matters  of  importance  lies  with  the  American  minister. 
Unlike  the  Republic  of  Santo  Domingo  in  the  eastern  end  of  the  island, 
Haiti  still  retains  her  native  government,  but  its  acts  are  subject  to 
a  relatively  close  supervision  by  the  officers  above  named,  despite  the 
pretense  that  our  share  is  only  "  advisory." 

There  are  both  natives  and  foreigners  who  contend  that  Haiti  is 
fully  capable  of  governing  itself  if  the  white  man  will  go  away  and  let 
the  Black  Republic  alone.  The  following  incident  is  not  without  its 
bearing  on  the  subject: 


UNDER  THE  PALM-TREE  OF  HAITI  121 

The  Rotary  Club  of  Port-au-Prince  decided  in  the  fifth  year  of 
American  occupation  to  assess  every  member  five  dollars  for  the  pur- 
pose of  providing  a  community  Christmas  for  the  poor  children  of  the 
city.  Never  had  a  Christmas-tree  been  seen  in  Haiti  outside  the  homes 
of  American  or  other  foreign  residents.  The  vast  majority  of  Haitians 
had  no  conception  that  so  benevolent  a  being  as  Santa  Claus  existed. 

The  Port  au  Prince  branch  of  the  club  had  been  very  recently  organ- 
ized. Its  membership  included  not  only  the  representative  business 
men  of  all  grades  in  the  foreign  colony,  but  it  had  made  a  special 
point  of  overlooking  the  color-line  and  admitting  as  many  Haitians 
as  white  men.  A  little  closer  intercourse  now  and  then  between  the 
two  races,  it  was  felt,  would  do  no  one  any  harm,  and  the  experience 
of  similar  clubs  in  Cuba  suggested  that  it  might  do  considerable  good. 
The  military  colony,  of  course,  took  no  part  in  this  flagrant  violation 
of  its  strict  Southern  principles  beyond  granting  its  official  blessing,  but 
the  civilians  had  long  contended  for  a  broader-minded  attitude. 

There  was  no  difficulty  in  finding  representative  Haitians  of  suffi- 
cient culture  to  be  worthy  a  place  in  such  an  assembly.  Men  educated 
in  Paris,  graduates  of  the  best  universities  in  other  European  capitals, 
men  who  spoke  the  French  language  as  perfectly  as  the  French  them- 
selves, men  who  could  give  the  average  American  business  man  cards 
and  spades  in  any  discussion  of  art,  literature,  and  the  finer  things  of 
civilization,  were  to  be  found  in  the  best  Haitian  homes.  The  native 
membership  as  finally  constituted  included  cabinet  ministers,  former 
ambassadors  to  the  principal  world  capitals,  lawyers  famous  for  their 
oratory,  and  men  who  had  produced  volumes  on  profound  subjects, 
to  say  nothing  of  very  tolerable  examples  of  lyric  poetry.  The  club 
did  not,  it  is  true,  completely  obliterate  the  color-line.  It  merely  moved 
it  along.  A  complete  sweep  of  the  crowded  table  at  the  weekly  club 
luncheons,  with  whites  and  Haitians  nicely  alternating,  did  not  disclose 
a  single  jet-black  face".  But  that  was  not  the  fault  of  the  club ;  it  was 
due  to  the  fact  that  the  benefits  of  higher  education  have  seldom  reached 
the  full-blooded  Africans  of  the  island,  as  distinguished  from  what  are 
known  locally  as  the  "  men  of  color." 

The  wives  of  the  white  club  members  took  up  the  task  of  providing 
a  suitable  Christmas  where  the  men  left  off,  and  pushed  the  matter  with 
American  enthusiasm.  They  canvassed  the  white  colony  for  additional 
funds ;  they  solicited  contributions  in  kind  from  the  merchants  of 
Caucasian  blood.  Their  evenings  they  spent  in  making  things  that 
would  bring  joy  to  the  little  black  babies,  in  putting  the  multifarious 


122          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

gifts  in  order,  in  laying  new  plans  to  make  the  affair  a  success.  By 
day  they  drove  about  in  their  automobiles  through  all  the  poorer  sec- 
tions of  the  city,  distributing  tickets  to  the  swarms  of  naked  black 
piccaninnies.  Mobs  of  harmless,  clamoring  negroes  surrounded  their 
cars,  holding  up  whole  clusters  of  babies  as  proof  of  their  right  to 
share  in  the  extraordinary  generosity  of  the  strange  white  people. 
Seas  of  clawing  black  hands  waved  about  them  like  some  scene  from 
Dante's  Inferno  in  an  African  setting.  A  tumult  of  pleading  voices 
assailed  their  ears :  "  Cartes,  mama,  donne-moi  cartes !  Moi  deux  petits, 
mama !  Non  gagner  carte  pour  petit  malade,  mama  ?  " 

The  "  ladies  of  color  "  of  the  other  club  members  formed  a  committee 
of  their  own  and  lent  a  certain  languid  assistance,  but  the  brunt  of  the 
work  fell  on  the  incomprehensibly  generous  whites.  The  men  of  the 
yellow  features  were  even  more  willing  to  leave  matters  to  their 
Caucasian  associates.  The  latter  were  more  experienced  in  the  ar- 
rangement of  Christmas-trees ;  moreover,  they  could  descend  to  vulgar 
work,  which  the  elite  of  Port  au  Prince  could  not  indulge  in  without 
losing  caste.  Curious  creatures,  these  whites,  anyway;  let  them  go 
ahead  and  spread  themselves.  The  "  men  of  color  "  were  quite  willing 
to  sit  back  and  watch  les  blancs  run  the  whole  affair  —  except  in  one 
particular,  the  distribution  of  tickets.  In  that  they  were  more  than 
ready  to  cooperate.  They  even  made  the  generous  offer  of  attending 
to  all  that  part  of  the  affair.  The  minister  of  public  instruction  came 
forward  with  a  plan  in  keeping  with  his  high  rotarian  standing.  If  the 
bulk  of  the  tickets,  say  two  thirds  of  them,  for  instance,  were  turned 
over  to  him,  he  would  personally  accept  the  arduous  labor  of  distribut- 
ing them  to  the  school-children.  Now  you  must  know  that  the  school- 
children of  Port  au  Prince  constitute  a  very  small  proportion  of  the 
young  population,  and  that  they  are  exactly  the  class  which  the  sponsors 
of  the  Christmas-tree  were  not  trying  to  reach.  Furthermore,  do  not 
lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  the  men  of  color  must  be  constantly  on  the 
qui  vive  to  keep  their  political  fences  in  order.  Even  the  ladies  of  the 
Haitian  committee  advised  against  the  minister's  proposition.  He, 
they  whispered,  would  divide  the  tickets  between  his  favorite  teachers, 
who  in  turn  would  distribute  them  to  their  pet  pupils. 

Meanwhile  Christmas  drew  near.  A  band  of  black  men  were  sent 
far  up  into  the  mountains  to  fetch  down  a  pine-tree.  They  are  numer- 
ous in  some  parts  of  Haiti,  occasionally  growing  side  by  side  with  the 
palms.  The  blacks  could  not,  of  course,  understand  why  they  must 
lug  a  tree  for  two  or  three  days  over  perpendicular  trails  when  trees 


UNDER  THE  PALM-TREE  OF  HAITI  123 

of  a  hundred  species  abounded  in  the  very  outskirts  of  Port  au  Prince ; 
but  this  was  not  the  first  time  they  had  received  absurd  orders  from 
the  incomprehensible  blancs.  They  selected  as  small  a  tree  as  they 
dared  and  started  down  the  mountain-side.  As  the  wide-spreading 
branches  hindered  their  progress,  they  lopped  most  of  them  off.  How 
should  they  know  that  the  inexplicable  white  men  wanted  the  branches 
to  hang  things  on?  The  gentleman  of  color,  right-hand  man  of  their 
great  national  president,  who  had  transmitted  the  order  to  them  had 
said  nothing  about  that,  nor  explained  how  the  branches  might  be 
bound  close  against  the  trunk  by  winding  a  rope  around  them. 

Christmas  morning  came.  Several  Americans  defied  the  tropical 
sun  to  direct  the  labors  of  another  band  of  blacks  engaged  in  planting 
a  diminutive  pine-tree  with  a  few  scattered  twigs  at  its  top,  and  to  hide 
its  nudity  beneath  another  tree  of  tropical  luxuriance,  out  on  the 
glaringly  bare  Champs  de  Mars  before  the  grand  stand  from  which 
the  elite  of  Port  au  Prince  watches  its  president  decorate  its  national 
heroes  after  a  successful  revolution.  The  rotarians  of  color  could 
not,  of  course,  be  expected  to  appear  at  such  a  place  in  the  heat  of  the 
day. 

The  ceremony  was  set  for  five  o'clock,  and  was  expected  to  last  until 
nine.  The  American  Electric  Light  Company  had  contributed  the  il- 
lumination, and  its  manager  had  installed  the  festoons  of  colored  lamps 
in  person.  The  American  chief  of  police  had  assigned  a  force  of  native 
gendarmes  to  the  duty  of  keeping  order.  It  would  be  almost  their 
first  test  of  handling  a  friendly  crowd  in  a  friendly  manner.  Hitherto 
their  task  had  been  to  hunt  down  their  caco  fellows  with  rifle  and 
revolver,  an  occupation  far  better  fitted  to  their  temperament  and 
liking.  An  American  of  benevolent  impulses  had  consented  to  play 
Santa  Claus,  and  give  the  little  black  urchins  a  real  Christmas,  with  all 
the  trimmings. 

Poor  Santa  Claus  did  not  get  time  even  to  don  his  whiskers.  By 
two  the  crowd  began  to  gather.  By  three  all  the  populace  of  Port  au 
Prince's  humble  sections  had  massed  about  the  tree  which  the  incom- 
prehensible blancs  had  planted  for  the  occasion  instead  of  performing 
their  strange  rites  under  one  of  the  many  live  trees  with  which  the  city 
abounded.  Word  had  been  sent  out  that  full  dress  was  not  essential. 
Old  women  who  had  barely  two  strips  of  rag  to  hang  over  their  dangling 
breasts,  boys  whose  combined  garments  did  not  do  the  duty  of  a  pair  of 
swimming-trunks,  had  tramped  up  from  their  primitive  hovels  on  the 
edges  of  the  city.  If  they  were  ragged  far  beyond  the  northern  mean- 


124          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

ing  of  that  term,  at  least  their  strings  and  tatters  were  as  clean  as  water 
and  sun-bleaching  could  make  them.  The  women  and  most  of  the  men 
carried  or  dragged  whole  clusters  of  black  babies,  most  of  them  as 
innocent  of  clothing  as  a  Parisian  statue.  As  they  arrived,  the  chil- 
dren were  herded  within  the  roped  inclosure  about  the  tree.  Only 
adults  with  infants  in  arms  were  permitted  inside  the  ropes;  the  jet- 
black  sea  of  small  faces  was  unbroken  clear  around  the  wide  seething 
circle.  It  was  hard  to  believe  that  there  were  so  many  piccaninnies 
in  the  world,  to  say  nothing  of  the  mere  half -island  of  Haiti.  Outside 
the  ropes  an  immense  throng  of  adults,  mingled  with  better-dressed 
children  without  tickets,  was  shrieking  a  constant  falsetto  tumult  that 
made  the  ear-drums  of  those  in  the  focus  of  sound  under  the  tree 
vibrate  as  if  their  ears  were  being  incessantly  boxed.  A  "  conservative 
estimate  "  set  the  number  present  at  ten  thousand. 

Up  to  this  point  the  gentlemen  of  color,  even  those  who  had  been 
appointed  on  the  original  committee,  had  kindly  refrained  from  inter- 
ference with  their  more  Christmas-experienced  white  associates  —  ex- 
cept in  the  aforementioned  matter  of  tickets.  Now  they  appeared  en 
masse  to  give  the  distinction  of  their  presence  and  the  sanction  of 
their  high  caste  to  so  praiseworthy  an  undertaking.  Cabinet  ministers, 
newspaper  editors,  the  bright  lights  of  the  Haitian  bar,  the  very  presi- 
dent of  the  republic,  strutted  down  the  human  lanes  that  were  opened 
in  their  honor  and  took  the  chief  places  of  vantage  on  the  distributing 
platform  beneath  the  tree.  Their  dazzling  dernier  cri  garments  made 
the  simple  American  committeemen  look  like  the  discards  of  fortune. 
Their  features  were  wreathed  in  benign  smiles.  They  stepped  forth  to 
the  edges  of  the  platform  and  waved  majestic,  benevolent  greetings  to 
their  applauding  constituents  outside  the  ropes.  Some  one  handed  the 
president  a  toy  horn.  He  put  it  to  his  lips  and  blew  an  imaginary  blast 
to  prove  what  a  bonhomme  he  was  at  heart  and  how  thoroughly  he 
entered  into  the  prevailing  spirit.  The  other  gentlemen  of  color  as- 
sumed Napoleonic  poses ;  they  raised  their  voices  in  oratorical  cadences, 
and,  when  these  failed  to  penetrate  the  unceasing  din,  they  waved  their 
hands  at  the  heaps  of  gifts  about  them  with  sweeping  gestures  that  said 
as  plainly  as  if  they  had  spoken  in  their  impeccable  French,  "  See,  my 
beloved  people,  what  /,  in  my  bounty,  have  bestowed  upon  you !  " 

Soon  after  four  the  minister  of  public  works  snatched  up  a  bundle 
of  presents  and  flung  them  out  into  the  sweltering  sea  of  upturned 
little  faces.  That  was  neither  the  hour  nor  the  manner  of  distribution 
that  had  been  agreed  upon,  but  what  should  a  great  political  genius 


UNDER  THE  PALM-TREE  OF  HAITI  125 

know  of  such  minor  details?  Besides,  there  was  no  hope  of  delaying 
the  ceremony  much  longer.  The  surging  throng  was  in  no  mood  to 
watch  the  absurd  antics  of  the  unfathomable  white  people,  with  their 
patched-up  tree  and  their  queer  ideas  of  order  and  equal  distribution. 
What  they  wanted  were  the  presents,  and  at  once.  Those  behind  were 
already  climbing  over  those  in  front  in  an  effort  to  get  at  the  heaped-up 
wares.  If  the  original  plan  of  waiting  until  nightfall  and  the  colored 
lights  had  been  carried  out,  the  gifts  would  probably  have  disappeared 
in  a  general  melee. 

The  beau  geste  of  the  Rotary  vice-president  was  a  signal  for  all  his 
yellow  confreres  to  distribute  largess  to  their  clamoring  constituents. 
In  vain  did  the  white  women  attempt  to  exchange  gifts  for  tickets, 
according  to  the  system  they  had  worked  out.  Their  kinky-haired 
associates  would  have  no  such  restrictions.  As  long  as  a  hand  was 
held  out  to  them  they  continued  to  thrust  gifts  into  it,  perfectly  indiffer- 
ent to  other  hands  clutching  tickets  that  were  being  wildly  flourished 
about  them.  There  were  presents  of  every  possible  usefulness  to 
Haitian  poverty  —  shoes,  stockings,  hats,  shirts,  suits,  collars,  ties, 
bales  of  cloth  cut  in  sizes  for  varying  ages  of  children's  garments, 
candy,  toys,  food  stuffs  ranging  all  the  way  from  cakes  to  cans  of 
sardines.  The  plan  had  been  to  gage  each  gift  by  the  appearance  of 
the  recipient.  There  was  nothing  particularly  Santa  Claus-like  in  hand- 
ing a  necktie  to  a  boy  who  had  not  shirt  enough  to  which  to  attach  a 
collar,  nor  in  wishing  a  pair  of  stockings  off  on  a  youth  whose  feet 
had  never  known  the  imprisonment  of  shoes.  Stark-naked  black 
babies  whose  ribs  could  be  counted  at  a  hundred  paces  were  not  so 
much  in  need  of  an  embroidered  sailor-blouse  as  of  a  tin  of  biscuits. 
But  all  this  meant  nothing  to  the  excited  Haitians  on  the  platform. 
They  poured  out  gifts  as  if  the  horn  of  plenty  were  their  own  private 
property.  The  ministers  caught  up  whole  armfuls  of  presents  and 
flung  them  clear  over  the  heads  of  the  invited  children  into  the  shrieking 
mobs  beyond  the  ropes.  The  adults  out  there  were  far  more  likely 
to  vote  for  them  at  the  next  elections  than  were  the  half-starved  urchins 
beneath  them.  One  cabinet  member  was  seen  to  toss  bundle  after 
bundle  to  an  extraordinarily  tall  negro  who  was  known  to  wield  great 
political  power  among  the  masses.  Meanwhile  the  helpless  little  urchins 
within  the  circle  rolled  their  white  eyes  in  despair  and  frantically  waved 
the  tickets  clutched  in  their  little  black  hands,  until  they  went  down 
under  the  bare  feet  of  those  fighting  forward  behind  them. 

The  native  gendarmes  in  their  uniforms  so  like  that  of  the  American 


126  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

marines  were  preserving  order  much  as  the  pessimists  had  predicted. 
One  of  them,  starched  and  ironed  to  the  minute,  approached  an  Ameri- 
can distributor  and  asked,  with  the  sweet-faced  courtesy  of  a  Southern 
lady  of  the  old  school,  for  one  of  the  riding-whips  which  some  merchant 
had  contributed.  "  Here  's  a  fine  fellow,"  said  the  unadorned  Santa 
Claus  to  himself, "  a  real  soldier.  He  wants  a  whip  to  use  on  mounted 
duty,  and  so  gentle-mannered  a  chap  will  make  only  proper  use  of  it." 
The  gendarme  accepted  the  gift  with  a  polite  bow  and  a  grateful  smile 
and  marched  back  across  the  ring  —  to  strike  full  in  the  face  with  all 
his  force  a  pitiful  old  black  woman  who  was  being  forced  forward  by 
the  crush  behind,  and  to  rain  blow  after  blow  on  her  bare  head  and 
breast  and  on  the  naked  infant  she  had  brought  on  the  invitation  of  the 
ticket  clutched  in  its  tiny  hand.  What  was  the  good  of  protesting? 
He  had  been  ordered  to  hold  back  the  crowd,  and  as  he  had  been  for- 
bidden to  use  the  revolver  strapped  at  his  side,  how  else  could  he  do  so  ? 
If  he  had  been  checked  in  his  onslaught,  he  would  have  spent  the  rest  of 
the  afternoon  wondering  what  these  strange  Americans  wanted,  any- 
way. 

By  dint  of  superhuman  exertions  the  white  distributors  succeeded  in 
exchanging  something  or  other  for  every  ticket.  But  it  was  a  sadly 
misgifted  swarm  of  children  who  finally  rescued  themselves  from  the 
maelstrom.  Tiny  tots  who  had  set  their  hearts  on  a  cake  or  a  package 
of  candy  held  up  the  neckties  they  knew  no  use  for  with  a  "Pas  bon 
pour  moi!  Donne  gateau!"  The  greatest  demand  was  for  shoes. 
" Non,  non,  papa!  soulier,  soulier!"  came  incessant  shrieks  from  the 
urchins  who  waved  unwelcome  gifts  before  the  weary  distributors. 
The  gentlemen  of  color  had  continued  to  strew  armfuls  of  presents 
upon  the  throng  beyond  the  ropes.  The  minister  with  the  lanky  con- 
federate had  tossed  him  assorted  wares  enough  to  break  the  back  of  a 
Haitian  donkey  —  a  feat  verging  on  the  impossible.  When  there  was 
nothing  else  left,  he  flung  him  several  huge  native  baskets  which  a  lady 
of  the  committee  had  loaned  for  the  occasion.  These  he  followed  with 
the  decorations  snatched  from  the  tree.  Then  he  took  to  unscrewing 
from  their  sockets  the  electric  light  bulbs  belonging  to  the  company 
that  had  contributed  the  useless  illuminations.  This  was  too  much 
even  for  the  benevolent-featured  man  who  had  been  cast  for  the  role 
of  Santa  Claus.  He  gathered  the  slack  of  the  minister's  immaculate 
trousers  in  one  hand  and  set  him  down  out  of  reach  of  further  tempta- 
tion. 

The  festivities  were  entirely  over  by  the  time  the  blazing-red  tropical 


UNDER  THE  PALM-TREE  OF  HAITI  127 

sun  sank  behind  the  mountainous  range  to  the  westward.  The  throng 
streamed  out  across  the  Champs  de  Mars  like  a  lake  of  molten  lead 
that  had  long  been  dammed  up  and  had  suddenly  broken  its  dikes. 
Not  a  scrap  even  of  the  tickets  that  had  been  canceled  by  being  torn  in 
two  remained.  In  Haiti  everything  has  its  commercial  value.  For 
days  to  come  little  heaps  of  these  bits  of  cardboard  would  be  offered 
for  sale  by  the  incredibly  ragged  old  women  of  the  more  miserable 
market-places,  to  be  made  use  of  the  voodoo  gods  know  how.  Among 
the  last  of  the  gentlemen  of  color  to  leave  the  platform  was  a  pompous 
being  resplendent  in  Port  au  Prince's  most  fashionable  raiment.  He 
was  a  graduate  of  the  Sorbonne,  a  political  power  in  the  Black  Republic, 
an  officer  of  the  Rotary  Club,  and  the  editor  of  Haiti's  principal  news- 
paper. In  one  hand,  which  he  held  half  concealed  beneath  the  tails  of 
his  frock-coat,  he  grasped  a  dozen  bright-colored  hair-ribbons  and 
several  silk  handkerchiefs  which  he  had  filched  from  the  basket  of 
presents  that  had  been  intrusted  to  him  for  distribution. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  DEATH   OF   CHARLEMAGNE 

THE  word  caco  first  appears  in  Haitian  history  in  1867.     The 
men  who  took  to  the  bush  in  the  insurrection  against  President 
Salnave  adopted  that  pseudonym,  and  nicknamed  sandolite 
those  who  supported  the  government.     The  semi-savage  insurrection- 
ists, flitting  at  will  through  the  rugged  interior  of  the  country,  indiffer- 
ent alike  to  the  thorny  jungle  and  the  precipitous  mountains,  saw  in 
themselves  a  likeness  to  the  Haitian  bird  which  flies  freely  everywhere, 
and  in  their  opponents  a  similarity  to  the  helpless  caterpillars  on  which 
it  feeds.     The  two  terms  have  persisted  to  this  day. 

Haiti  has  never  since  been  entirely  free  from  cacos,  though  there 
have  been  occasional  short  periods  when  the  country  has  been  spared 
their  ravages.  Let  a  new  president  lose  his  popularity,  however,  or 
some  ambitious  rascal  raise  the  banner  of  revolt,  and  the  bandit- 
revolutionists  were  quick  to  flock  together,  beginning  their  operations  as 
soon  as  the  mangos  were  ripe  enough  to  furnish  them  subsistence. 
With  the  exception  of  a  few  ephemeral  leaders  with  more  or  less  of 
the  rudiments  of  education,  the  cacos  are  a  heterogeneous  mob  of 
misguided  wretches  who  have  been  cajoled  or  forced  into  revolt  by 
circumstances  of  coercion.  Ragged,  penniless,  illiterate  fellows  in  the 
mass,  they  gather  in  bands  varying  from  a  score  to  thousands  in 
number,  depending  on  the  reputation,  persuasiveness,  or  power  of  com- 
pulsion of  their  self-appointed  leaders.  The  latter,  though  in  some 
cases  men  of  standing,  are  more  often  as  illiterate  as  their  followers. 
Now  and  again  one  of  them,  usually  with  some  Caucasian  blood  in  his 
veins,  has  personal  ambitions  either  of  making  himself  President  of 
Haiti  in  the  long-approved  manner,  or  at  least  of  becoming  powerful 
enough  to  force  the  Government  to  appoint  him  ruler  of  a  province 
or  of  a  smaller  district.  Others  are  merely  the  agents  of  disgruntled 
politicians  or  influential  "  respectable  citizens  "  of  Port  au  Prince  or 
others  of  the  larger  cities,  who  secretly  supply  funds  to  the  active  insur- 
rectionists. 

The  backwardness  and  poverty  of  Haiti  are  largely  due  to  the  con- 

128 


THE  DEATH  OF  CHARLEMAGNE  129 

stant  menace  of  these  roving  outlaws.  Travel  has  often  entirely  dis- 
appeared from  many  a  trail;  more  than  one  fertile  region  has  been 
left  wholly  uncultivated  and  virtually  uninhabited  because  of  marauding 
bands  of  cacos.  Cattle,  once  plentiful  throughout  the  republic,  have 
almost  wholly  disappeared,  thanks  to  the  fact  that  their  flesh  furnishes 
the  chief  means  of  livelihood  and  their  hides  the  one  sure  source  of 
income  for  the  bandits.  The  depredations  of  the  cacos  have  cost  the 
Black  Republic  most  of  its  wealth  and  the  greater  share  of  its  worldly 
troubles. 

Some  two  years  after  American  occupation  cacoism  took  on  a  new 
life.  In  perfect  frankness  it  must  be  admitted  that  this  was  partly 
the  fault  of  the  Americans.  Next  to  the  cleaning  up  of  Port  au  Prince 
the  most  important  job  on  hand  was  the  building  of  roads.  If  Haiti 
is  to  take  her  place  even  at  the  tail  end  of  civilization,  she  must  become 
self-supporting  —  in  other  words,  able  to  pay  her  foreign  debts,  both 
public  and  commercial.  The  prosperity  of  French  days,  when  the 
island  exported  large  quantities  of  coffee,  sugar,  and  cotton,  has  as 
completely  disappeared  under  the  anarchy  of  the  blacks  as  have  the  old 
plantations.  What  little  the  country  might  still  export,  consisting 
mainly  of  coffee,  could  not  get  down  to  tide-water  for  lack  of  high- 
ways, those  which  the  French  built  having  been  wholly  overgrown  by 
the  militant  jungle. 

In  their  eagerness  to  furnish  the  country  with  this  first  obvious  step 
to  advancement  the  forces  of  occupation  resurrected  an  old  French 
law  called  the  corvee.  We  still  have  something  of  the  sort  in  many  of 
our  own  rural  districts  —  the  requirement  that  every  citizen  shall  work 
a  certain  number  of  days  a  year  on  the  roads.  But  there  is  a  wide 
difference  between  the  public-spirited  Americans  and  the  wild  black 
men  into  which  the  mass  of  Haitians  has  degenerated.  Neither  they 
nor  their  ancestors  £pr  several  generations  have  seen  the  need  of  roads, 
at  least  anything  more  than  trails  wide  enough  along  which  to  chase 
their  donkeys.  But  they  probably  would  have  endured  the  resurrected 
corvee  had  it  been  applied  in  strict  legality,  a  few  days'  labor  in  their 
own  locality,  instead  of  being  carried  out  with  too  energetic  a  hand. 
When  they  were  driven  from  their  huts  at  the  point  of  a  gendarme 
rifle,  transported,  on  their  own  bare  feet,  to  distant  parts  of  the  country, 
and  forced  to  labor  for  weeks  under  armed  guards,  it  is  natural  that 
they  should  have  concluded  that  these  new-coming  foreigners  with 
white  skins  were  planning  to  reduce  them  again  to  the  slavery  they 
had  thrown  off  more  than  a  century  before.  The  result  was  that  a 


I3o          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

•certain  percentage  of  the  forced  laborers  caught  up  any  weapon  at 
hand  and  took  to  the  hills  as  cacos.  If  they  have  any  definite  policy, 
it  is  to  imitate  their  forefathers  and  drive  the  white  men  from  the 
island.  One  chief  announced  the  program  of  killing  off  the  American 
men  and  carrying  their  women  off  to  the  hills.  The  mass  of  Haitians 
believe  that  the  world's  supply  of  white  men  is  very  limited ;  it  is  beyond 
their  conception  that  there  are  many  fold  more  of  them  where  these 
came  from.  Their  ancestors  drove  out  the  French,  and  they  not 
only  did  not  come  back,  but  the  blacks  were  never  subjected  to  any 
punishment  —  at  least  any  their  simple  minds  could  recognize  as  such  — 
for  their  revolt.  Why  could  not  a  new  Toussaint  1'Ouverture  accom- 
plish the  feat  over  again  ? 

Our  mistake  in  the  matter  has  been  corrected.  The  American  officer 
who  countenanced,  if  he  did  not  sanction,  these  high-handed  methods 
has  gone  to  new  honors  on  other  fields  of  battle ;  the  young  district 
commanders  whose  absolute  power  led  them  to  apply  too  sternly  their 
orders  to  build  roads  have  returned  tc  the  ranks,  and  the  corvee  has 
been  abolished.  But  the  scattered  revolt  persists,  and  in  the  opinion  of 
all  but  a  few  temperamentally  optimistic  residents,  either  Haitian  or 
American,  is  due  to  continue  for  some  time  to  come.  That  forced  labor 
was  not  the  cause  of  cacoism,  for  it  is  in  the  Haitian  blood  to  turn 
caco;  but  it  made  a  fertile  field  of  ignorant,  disgruntled  negroes  from 
which  the  bandit  leaders  were  able  to  harvest  most  of  their  followers, 
and  it  gave  added  strength  to  the  chief  argument  of  the  rascally  leaders 
—  the  assertion  that  the  Americans  had  come  to  take  possession  of 
Haiti  and  reestablish  slavery.  To  this  day  even  the  foreign  companies 
which  have  no  trouble  in  recruiting  labor  for  other  purposes  cannot  hire 
the  workmen  needed  to  build  their  roads.  The  thick-skulled  native 
countrymen  see  in  that  particular  task  the  direct  route  to  becoming 
slaves. 

For  more  than  two  years  courageous  young  Americans  have  been 
chasing  cacos  among  the  hills  of  central  and  northern  Haiti,  with  no 
other  ulterior  motive  than  to  give  the  Black  Republic  the  internal  peace 
it  has  long  lacked  and  sadly  needed.  All  of  them  are  members  of  our 
Marine  Corps,  though  many  of  them  are  in  addition  officers  of  the 
Gendarmerie  of  Haiti,  with  increased  rank  and  pay.  Take  care  not  to 
confuse  these  two  divisions  of  pacifiers,  for  the  gendarmerie  has  a 
strong  esprit  de  corps,  and  a  just  pride  in  its  own  achievements,  in 
spite  of  being  still  marines  at  heart.  For  a  long  time  the  native 
gendarmes,  of  whom  twenty-five  hundred,  officered  by  marine  ^listed 


THE  DEATH  OF  CHARLEMAGNE  131 

men,  have  been  recruited  by  our  forces  of  occupation,  were  efficient 
against  the  bandits  only  when  personally  led  by  Americans.  Merely 
to  shout  the  word  "  Caco ! "  has  long  been  sufficient  to  stampede  a 
Haitian  gathering  of  any  size.  Bit  by  bit,  however,  the  gendarmes 
have  been  taught  by  practical  demonstration  that  they  are  better  men 
than  the  cacos,  and  the  immediate  job  of  hunting  down  the  bandits  is 
gradually  being  turned  over  to  these  native  soldiers.  American  super- 
vision, nevertheless,  for  years  to  come  will  certainly  be  necessary  to 
eventual  success. 

Though  the  world  has  heard  little  of  it,  our  caco-hunters  have  per- 
formed feats  that  compare  with  anything  done  by  their  fellows  in 
France.  In  fact,  their  work  has  often  required  more  sustained  courage 
and  individual  initiative,  and  has  brought  with  it  greater  hardships. 
In  the  trenches  at  their  worst  the  warrior  had  the  support  and  the  sense 
of  companionship  of  his  comrades  and  a  more  or  less  certain  commis- 
sary at  the  rear;  if  his  opponents  were  sometimes  brutal,  they  clung 
to  some  of  the  rules  of  civilized  warfare.  In  Haiti  many  a  young 
American  gendarme  officer  has  set  forth  on  an  expedition  of  long  dura- 
tion through  the  mountainous  wilderness,  often  wholly  alone,  except 
for  three  or  four  native  gendarmes,  cousins  to  the  cacos  themselves, 
sleeping  on  the  bare  ground  when  he  dared  to  sleep  at  all,  subsisting 
on  the  scanty  products  of  the  jungle,  his  life  entirely  dependent  on  his 
own  wits,  and  his  nerves  always  taut  with  the  knowledge  that  to  be 
wounded  or  captured  means  savage  torture  and  mutilation,  to  be  fol- 
lowed by  certain  death.  Bit  by  bit  the  native  gendarmes  have  been 
trained  to  fight  the  cacos  unassisted,  and  three  or  four  of  them  have 
now  reached  commissioned  rank;  but  the  best  of  them  still  require 
the  moral  support  of  a  white  leader,  and  the  energetic  American  youths 
scattered  through  the  "  brush  "  of  Haiti  have  the  future  peace  of  the 
country  in  their  keeping. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  the  cacos  do  not  constitute  a  dangerous  army 
in  the  modern  sense  of  the  word.  Their  discipline  is  less  than  embry- 
onic, their  weapons  seldom  better  than  dangerous  playthings.  One  rifle 
to  five  men  is  the  average  equipment,  and  many  of  these  are  antiquated 
pieces  captured  from  the  French  expeditionary  force  under  Leclerc  that 
was  driven  from  the  island  more  than  a  century  ago.  Some  of  them 
are  of  no  more  use  than  the  cocomacaque,  or  Haitian  shillalah,  even 
when  their  possessors  can  obtain  ammunition.  Such  cartridges  as  fall 
into  the  hands  of  the  cacos  are  usually  wrapped  round  and  round  with 
paper  to  make  them  fit  the  larger  bore  of  their  ancient  guns,  and  the 


132          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

bullet  that  comes  zigzagging  down  the  barrel  is  seldom  deadly  beyond 
two  hundred  yards.  But  the  possession  of  a  rifle,  even  one  worthless 
as  a  firearm,  is  a  sign  of  leadership  that  carries  with  it  great  personal 
pride,  and  an  occasional  caco  owns  a  high-powered  modern  carbine. 
The  mass  of  them  are  armed  with  machetes,  rusty  swords  of  the  olden 
days,  or  revolvers  even  more  useless  than  the  rifles. 

The  lesser  military  ranks  are  not  in  favor  among  the  cacos.  Every 
leader  of  a  band  is  a  general,  and  usually  a  major  general  at  that. 
Most  of  them  have  been  commissioned  by  the  caco-in-chief  —  on  a  slip 
of  paper  scrawled  with  a  rusty  pen,  or  even  with  a  pencil,  by  the  one 
man  on  his  staff  who  can  write  a  more  or  less  legible  hand.  These 
'*  commissions  "  all  follow  the  prescribed  form,  which  has  been  stereo- 
typed in  Haiti  since  the  days  of  Dessalines : 

"  Liberte  Egalite  Fraternite 

Republique  d'Haiti 

Inf orme  que  vous  reunissez  les  conditions  et  aptitudes  voulues  — 
Informed  that  you  possess  the  qualifications  and  aptitude  desired,  I 
hereby  appoint  you  general  of  division  operating  against  the  Americans 
and  direct  that  you  proceed  with  your  troops  to  attack  "  —  this  or  that 
hamlet  or  village  in  the  hills.  The  expression  "  Operant  contre  les 
americains  "  is  seldom  lacking  in  these  scribbled  rags,  and  some  of  them 
raise  the  holder  to  higher  dignities  than  were  ever  reached  by  mere 
field  marshals  on  the  battle-grounds  of  Europe.  The  "  commission," 
for  instance,  of  the  "  Chief  of  Intelligence  "  of  the  caco-in-chief  reads 
succinctly,  "  I  name  you  as  chief  of  the  Division  of  Spies  to  spy  every- 
where "  —  an  order  that  has  at  least  the  virtue  of  leaving  the  recipient 
unhampered  with  that  division  of  responsibility  which  has  been  the 
bane  of  civilized  warfare.  Incidentally  the  intelligence  system  of  the 
cacos  is  their  strongest  point.  Like  most  uncivilized  tribes  the  world 
over,  they  have  some  means  of  spreading  information  that  makes  the 
telegraph  and  even  the  radio  seem  slow  and  inefficient  by  comparison. 
An  uninformed  stranger,  reading  these  highf alutin'  "  commissions," 
might  easily  picture  the  caco  **  generals  "  as  mightier  men  than  Foch 
and  Pershing  combined,  instead  of  what  they  really  are,  stupid,  un- 
educated negroes  dressed  in  the  dirty  remnants  of  an  undershirt  and 
cotton  trousers,  a  discard  straw  or  felt  hat  with  a  bit  of  red  rag  sewed 
on  it  as  a  sign  of  rank,  and  armed  with  a  rusty  old  saber  or  a  revolver 
that  has  long  since  lost  its  power  to  revolve. 


THE  DEATH  OF  CHARLEMAGNE  133 

The  cacos  have  a  mortal  fear  of  white  soldiers.  Scores  of  times  a 
single  marine  or  gendarme  officer  has  routed  bands  of  a  hundred  or 
more,  killing  as  many  as  his  automatic  rifle  could  reach  in  the  short 
period  between  their  first  glimpse  of  him  and  the  time  it  takes  the 
ragged  "  army  "  to  scatter  to  the  four  points  of  the  compass  through 
thorny  undergrowth  or  cactus-hedges  which  no  white  man  could  pene- 
trate though  all  the  forces  of  evil  were  pursuing  him.  The  natives 
cannot  "  savez  "  this  uncanny  prowess  of  les  blancs,  and  commonly 
attribute  it  to  the  sustaining  force  of  some  voodoo  spirit  friendly  to  the 
white  man.  This  belief  is  to  a  certain  extent  a  boomerang,  for  the 
Haitian  gendarmes  often  fancy  themselves  immune  in  the  presence  of 
a  white  superior,  and  more  than  one  of  them  has  bitten  the  dust  because 
he  insisted  on  calmly  standing  erect,  smoking  a  cigarette,  and  placidly 
handing  cartridges  to  the  marine  who  lay  hugging  the  ground  beside 
him,  pumping  lead  into  the  fleeing  cacos.  With  a  white  man  along 
how  could  he  be  hurt?  Up  to  date  at  least  three  thousand  bandits 
have  been  killed  as  against  four  Americans,  —  a  major  and  a  sergeant 
who  were  shot  from  ambush,  and  two  privates  who  lost  their  lives  by 
over-confidence. 

Captured  correspondence  shows  what  a  terrible  war  is  this  guerre 
des  cacos: 

"  The  Americans,"  reads  the  report  of  one  general  de  division  to  his 
superior,  "  attacked  us  in  force  on  the  night  of  the  I3~i4th.  I  found 
myself  with  a  shortage  of  ammunition,  but  I  succeeded  in  borrowing 
ten  carbine  cartridges  and  three  revolver  bullets  and  was  able  to  hold 
the  situation  in  hand."  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  American  *'  force  " 
consisted  on  this  particular  occasion  of  three  marines,  and  the  "  gen- 
eral "  "  held  the  situation  in  hand  "  by  scurrying  away  through  the 
mountains  so  fast  that  it  was  a  week  or  more  before  he  got  any  con- 
siderable number  of  his  band  together  again. 

"  I  write  to  tell  you,"  says  another  great  military  genius,  "  that  I 
had  a  cruel  battle  before  Las  Cahobas  the  other  day,  with  one  wounded. 
I  also  tell  you  that  I  arrested  General  Ulysses  St.  Raisin  for  being  drunk 
and  disarmed  him,  and  he  is  under  guard  in  my  camp.  Also  that 
General  Etienne  Monbrun  Dubuisson  had  a  big  battle  with  the  Ameri- 
cans last  week  and  besides  having  a  soldier  severely  wounded  he  had 
one  delegue  taken  by  the  whites." 

The  Americans  who  are  striving  to  bring  internal  peace  to  Haiti 
have  come  to  the  unanimous  conclusion  that  the  mere  killing  of  cacos 
will  not  wipe  out  banditism.  They  have  hunted  them  by  every  avail- 


134          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

able  means,  including  the  use  of  aeroplanes.  The  cacos  show  a  whole- 
some terror  for  the  latter,  which  they  call  "  God's  wicked  angels  " ;  they 
have  suffered  "  cruel "  losses  before  the  machine-guns  of  the  deter- 
mined American  youths  who  are  pursuing  them,  but  they  continue  their 
cacoism.  All  efforts  are  now  being  bent  to  two  ends  —  to  kill  off 
the  chiefs  and  to  weed  the  country  of  firearms.  In  the  early  days 
of  the  occupation  the  native  caught  in  possession  of  a  rifle  was  given 
five  years  at  hard  labor,  and  many  of  them  are  still  serving  sentence, 
though  the  penalty  has  recently  been  reduced  to  six  months.  Every 
report  of  "  jumping  "  a  band  or  a  camp  of  cacos  ends  now  with  a  regu- 
lar formula  in  which  only  the  numbers  differ :  "  Killed  i  general  and  2 
chiefs;  captured  9  rifles,  6  swords,  n  machetes." 

The  tendency  of  the  caco  to  use  his  rifle  chiefly  as  ballast  to  be 
thrown  overboard  when  the  appearance  of  a  white  soldier  gives  his 
black  legs  their  maximum  speed  has  helped  this  weeding  out  of  weapons, 
as  the  time-honored  Haitian  custom  for  opposing  warriors  to  mount  a 
prominent  hillock  and  hurl  foul-mouthed  defiance  at  their  foes  has 
raised  the  scores  of  American  marksmen.  Recently  an  intelligent 
propaganda  has  been  carried  on  by  the  gendarmerie  to  induce  the  misled 
rank  and  file  to  come  in  and  surrender  their  arms,  receiving  in  exchange 
a  small  cash  equivalent  and  a  card  attesting  them  bons  habitants.  This 
offer  of  amnesty,  which  has  already  shown  gratifying  results,  is  brought 
to  the  attention  of  the  bandits  chiefly  through  the  market-women,  who, 
swarming  all  over  Haiti,  have  always  been  the  chief  channel  of  infor- 
mation for  the  cacos,  with  whom  they  are  in  the  main  friendly  despite 
having  frequently  been  robbed  of  their  wares  by  some  hungry  "  army." 
The  chief  drawback  to  this  plan,  however,  is  a  certain  lack  of  team- 
work befween  the  two  corps  of  caco-hunters.  The  marines  have  orders 
to  shoot  on  sight  any  native  carrying  a  rifle  —  a  perfectly  justifiable 
command,  since  there  is  no  other  distinguishing  mark  between  a  bon 
habitant  and  a  caco.  But  the  result  is  that  the  chief  who  has  deter- 
mined that  surrender  to  the  nearest  gendarme  officer  is  the  better  part 
of  valor,  or  the  caco  "  volunteer  "  who  has  at  last  succeeded  in  eluding 
his  own  sentries,  is  forced  to  wrap  his  weapon  in  banana-leaves  and 
sneak  up  to  within  a  few  miles  of  town,  hide  his  firearm,  and  appJ.y 
at  the  gendarmerie  for  a  native  soldier  to  protect  him  while  he  goes 
to  get  it. 

In  most  cases  the  bandits  travel  in  small  groups  until  called 
together  for  some  projected  attack.  But  more  than  one  permanent 
camp,  veritable  towns  in  some  cases,  has  been  found  tucked  away  in 


THE  DEATH  OF  CHARLEMAGNE  135 

some  mountainous  retreat.  The  latest  of  these  to  be  destroyed  had 
seventy-five  houses,  a  headquarters  building  (with  two  hundred  chairs), 
a  voodoo  temple,  and  a  cockpit;  for  the  caco  remains  a  true  Haitian 
for  all  his  cacoism,  and  will  not  be  separated  from  his  voodoo  rites,  his 
fighting  cock,  and  his  women  except  in  case  of  direst  necessity. 

Of  many  courageous  feats  performed  by  the  American  youths  in 
khaki  who  are  roaming  the  hills  of  Haiti  one  stands  out  as  the  most 
spectacular.  Indeed,  it  is  fit  to  rank  with  any  of  the  stirring  warrior 
tales  with  which  history  is  seasoned  from  the  days  of  the  Greeks  to  the 
recent  World  War.  Hearing  it,  one  might  fancy  he  was  listening  to 
a  story  of  the  black  ages  of  Haiti  when  Christophe  was  ruling  his  sable 
brethren  with  bloody  hand,  rather  than  to  something  accomplished  a 
bare  half-year  ago  by  a  persevering  young  American. 

Charlemagne  Masena  Peralte  was  a  member  of  one  of  the  two 
families  that  have  long  predominated  in  the  village  of  Hinche.  He  was 
what  the  Haitians  call  a  griffe,  a  three-fourths  negro.  The  French 
priest  with  whom  he  served  as  choir-boy  and  acolyte  remembers  him 
well  as  "  a  boy  who  was  not  bad,  but  haughty  and  jjuick  to  take  offense." 
When  he  had  learned  what  the  thatched  schoolhouse  of  Hinche  had  to 
offer,  Charlemagne  was  sent  to  Port  au  Prince,  where  he  finished  the 
course  given  by  French  ecclesiastics.  In  other  words  he  was  a  man 
of  education  by  Haitian  standards.  Like  many  of  the  sons  of  the 
"  best  families "  in  Haiti,  he  decided  to  go  into  politics  rather  than 
pursue  a  more  orderly  profession.  But  politicians  are  thicker  than 
mangos  in  the  Black  Republic,  and  for  some  reason  things  did  not 
break  right  for  Charlemagne.  Wounded  in  his  pride  and  denied 
his  expected  source  of  easy  income,  he  followed  the  long-established 
Haitian  custom  in  such  matters.  He  gathered  a  band  of  malcontents 
and  penniless  cacos  about  him  and  marched  against  the  capital.  The 
Government  realized  the  danger  and  bought  Charlemagne  off  by  ap- 
pointing him  commandant  of  an  important  district.  A  few  years  later, 
when  a  new  turn  of  the  political  wheel  left  him  again  among  the  "  outs," 
he  followed  the  same  route  to  another  official  position.  It  got  to  be  a 
habit  with  Charlemagne  to  force  each  succeeding  government  to  appoint 
him  to  office. 

Finding  himself  in  disfavor  with  the  American  occupation,  he  set 
out  to  work  his  little  scheme  once  more.  It  does  not  seem  to  have 
occurred  to  him  that  conditions  had  changed.  Captured,  and  convicted 
-»f  cacoism  in  October,  1917,  by  an  American  court  martial  sitting  in 


136          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

his  native  town  of  Hinche,  he  was  sentenced  to  five  years  at  hard 
labor. 

A  year  later,  while  working  on  the  roads  in  company  with  other 
inmates  of  the  departmental  prison  at  Cap  Haitien,  he  eluded  his 
gendarme  guards  and  escaped.  Taking  to  the  bush,  he  set  out  to 
organize  a  new  band  of  cacos.  The  corvee,  then  at  its  height,  jnade 
his  task  easier.  To  turn  the  scales  still  more  in  his  favor,  the  large 
gang  working  on  the  highway  at  Dignon,  near  his  home  town,  had 
not  been  paid  in  more  than  three  months,  thanks  to  that  stagnation  of 
circulation  to  which  quartermaster  departments  are  frequently  subject. 
"  Come  along,"  said  Charlemagne,  "  and  /  'II  get  you  your  money,"  and 
some  three  hundred  disgruntled  workmen  followed  him  into  the  moun- 
tains. 

Within  a  few  months  he  was  signing  himself  "  Chief  of  the  Revolu- 
tionary Forces  against  the  American  nation  on  the  soil  of  Haiti,"  and 
had  gathered  several  thousand  cacos  about  him.  The  magic  name  of 
General  Charlemagne  spread  throughout  the  island.  Every  leader  of 
a  collection  of  lawless  ragamufnins  sought  to  be  "  commissioned  '*  by 
him.  He  appointed  more  generals  than  ever  did  a  European  sovereign 
Every  lazy  black  rascal  with  nothing  to  lose  and  everything  to  gain 
joined  his  growing  ranks.  When  the  simple  countrymen  would  not 
follow  him  by  choice,  they  were  recruited  by  force.  He  assassinated 
and  punished  until  his  word  became  law  to  any  one  out  of  reach  of  gen- 
darme protection.  He  spread  propaganda  against  the  American  officers, 
asserted  that  they  had  orders  to  annex  the  country,  and  posed  as  the 
savior  of  Haiti,  calling  upon  the  people  to  help  him  drive  out  the  white 
oppressors  as  their  fathers  had  done  more  than  a  century  before. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  patriotism  of  Charlemagne,  of  which  he 
constantly  boasted  in  pompous  words,  consisted  of  nothing  more  or  less 
than  an  exaggerated  ego  and  an  overwhelming  desire  to  advance  his 
own  personal  interests.  He  had  that  in  common  with  all  the  yellow 
politicians  of  Haiti.  But  he  played  the  patriotic  card  with  unusual 
success.  Disgruntled  politicians  and  men  of  wealth  who  had  some 
personal  reason  for  wishing  the  occupation  abolished  gave  him  secret 
aid.  The  simple  mountain  negroes  really  believed  that  they  were  fight- 
ing to  free  Haiti  from  the  white  man,  and  that  under  the  great  General 
Charlemagne  the  task  would  soon  be  accomplished.  The  corvee  hap- 
pened to  have  been  abolished  soon  after  the  "  general's  "  escape  from 
prison;  he  quickly  took  personal  credit  for  the  change  and  promised 
the  simple  Haitians  to  free  them  in  the  same  manner  of  all  foreign 


THE  DEATH  OF  CHARLEMAGNE  137 

interference.  Before  the  end  of  1918  he  attacked  his  native  town 
with  several  thousand  followers  and  was  not  easily  repulsed.  It  was 
decided  to  put  the  marines  in  the  field  against  him,  and  for  eight 
months  they  pursued  him  in  vain.  If  anything,  the  caco  situation  was 
becoming  worse  instead  of  better.  Despite  the  "  jumping"  of  many  a 
band  and  camp  by  the  marines  and  the  gendarmerie,  the  central  portion 
of  the  country  was  becoming  more  and  more  bandit-ridden.  It  became 
apparent  that  the  pacification  of  Haiti  depended  chiefly  on  the  elimina- 
tion of  Charlemagne. 

Herman  H.  Hanneken  was  a  typical  young  American  who  had  joined 
the  Marine  Corps  soon  after  finishing  at  the  preparatory  school  on  the 
corner  of  Cass  and  Twelfth  streets  in  his  native  town  of  St.  Louis. 
After  taking  part  in  the  Vera  Cruz  demonstration,  he  was  sent  to 
Haiti  with  the  first  forces  of  occupation,  in  August,  1915.  There  he 
reached  the  rank  of  sergeant,  and  in  due  time  became  in  addition  a  cap- 
tain in  the  Gendarmerie  d'Haiti.  It  was  in  the  latter  rather  than  the 
former  capacity  that  he  took  part  in  the  little  episode  I  am  attempting 
to  report,  which  was  strictly  an  affair  of  the  gendarmerie  as  distin- 
guished from  their  brotherly  rivals  in  arms,  the  marines. 

In  June,  1919,  Captain  Hanneken  was  appointed  district  commander, 
with  headquarters  in  the  old  town  of  Grande  Riviere,  famous  in 
Haitian  military  and  political  annals.  A  powerful  fellow  of  more  than 
six  feet,  who  had  reached  the  advanced  age  of  twenty-five,  he  was 
ideal  material  for  the  making  of  a  successful  caco-hunter.  Having 
recently  returned  from  leave  in  the  States,  however,  and  his  former 
stations  having  been  in  peaceful  regions,  he  had  little  field  experience 
in  the  extermination  of  bandits.  Moreover,  his  extreme  modesty  and 
inability  to  blow  his  own  horn  had  never  called  him  particularly  to  the 
attention  of  the  higher  officials  of  the  gendarmerie.  No  one  expected 
him  to  do  more  than  rule  his  station  with  the  average  high  efficiency 
which  is  taken  for  granted  in  any  of  the  hand-picked  marines  who  are 
detailed  as  gendarme  officers. 

Captain  Hanneken,  however,  had  higher  ambitions.  Having  familiar- 
ized himself  in  a  month  with  the  routine  of  his  district,  he  found  time 
weighing  heavily  on  his  hands.  He  turned  his  attention  to  the  then 
most  pressing  duty  in  Haiti,  the  elimination  of  Charlemagne.  Unfor- 
tunately for  his  plans,  there  were  almost  no  cacos  in  the  district  of 
Grande  Riviere.  He  could  not  encroach  upon  the  territory  of  his 
fellow-officers  ;  the  only  chance  of  "  getting  a  crack  "  at  the  bandits  was 
to  import  some  of  them  into  his  own  region. 


138          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

Jean  Batiste  Conze,  a  native  of  Grande  Riviere,  was  a  griff e,  like 
Charlemagne ;  he  also  belonged  to  one  of  the  "  best  families  "  of  his 
home  town.  But  there  his  similarity  with  the  chief  of  the  cacos  ceased. 
He  had  always  been  a  law-abiding  citizen,  and  had  once  been  chief  of 
police  on  his  native  heath.  Like  all  good  Haitians,  he  realized  the 
damage  and  suffering  which  the  continued  depredations  of  the  bandits 
were  causing  his  country.  Moreover,  he  was  at  a  low  financial  ebb; 
but  that  is  too  general  a  condition  in  Haiti  to  call  for  special  comment, 
beyond  stating  that  a  reward  of  two  thousand  dollars  had  been  offered 
for  Charlemagne,  dead  or  alive. 

One  night  Captain  Hanneken  asked  Conze  to  call  upon  him  at  his 
residence.  When  he  was  certain  that  the  walls  had  been  shorn  of  their 
ears,  he  addressed  his  visitor  in  the  Haitian  "  Creole,"  which  he  had 
learned  to  speak  like  a  native : 

"  Conze,  I  want  you  to  go  and  join  the  cacos." 

"  'Aiti,  mon  capitaine !  "  cried  Conze,  "  Moi,  toujou'  bon  habitant,  de 
bonne  famille,  me  faire  coco?" 

"  Exactly,"  replied  Hanneken ;  "  I  want  you  to  become  a  cac o  chief. 
I  will  furnish  you  whatever  is  necessary  to  gather  a  good  band  of 
them  about  you,  and  you  can  take  to  the  hills  and  establish  a  camp  of 
your  own." 

The  conference  lasted  well  into  the  night,  whereupon  Conze  con- 
sented, and  left  the  captain's  residence  through  the  back  garden  in  order 
to  call  as  little  attention  as  possible  to  his  visit.  A  few  days  later, 
toward  the  middle  of  August,  he  disappeared  from  town,  carrying  with 
him  in  all  secrecy  fifteen  rifles  that  had  once  been  captured  from 
the  cacos,  150  rounds  of  ammunition,  several  swords,  and  a  showy 
pearl-handled  revolver  that  belonged  to  Hanneken.  He  was  well 
furnished,  too,  with  money  and  rum,  the  chief  sinews  of  war 
among  the  cacos.  With  him  had  gone  a  personal  friend  and  a  trusted 
native  gendarme  who  was  forthwith  rated  a  deserter  on  the  captain's 
roster. 

Conze  took  pains  to  be  seen  by  the  worst  native  element  as  he  was 
leaving  town,  among  whom  he  had  already  spread  propaganda  calling 
upon  them  to  join  him  in  a  new  caco  enterprise.  On  the  road  he  held 
up  the  market-women  and  several  travelers,  taking  nothing  from  them, 
but  impressing  upon  them  the  fact  that  he  had  turned  bandit.  All 
this  was  reported  to  Captain  Hanneken  by  his  secret  police.  He  told 
them  to  keep  their  ears  open,  but  not  to  worry,  that  he  would  get  the 
rascal  all  in  good  season.  One  morning  a  written  notice  appeared  in 


THE  DEATH  OF  CHARLEMAGNE  139 

the  market  of  Grande  Riviere.  It  was  signed  by  Conze  and  berated  the 
commander  of  the  district  in  violent  terms,  calling  upon  the  inhabitants 
to  join  the  writer  and  put  an  end  to  his  oppression.  People  recalled 
that  Conze  and  the  big  American  ruler  of  the  town  had  once  had  words 
over  some  small  matter.  Within  three  days  the  talk  in  all  the  district 
was  of  this  member  of  one  of  Grande  Riviere's  most  prominent 
families  who  had  turned  caco. 

Specially  favored  by  his  rifles,  rum,  and  apparently  unlimited  funds, 
Conze  soon  gathered  a  large  band  of  real  cacos  about  him.  When 
questions  were  asked,  he  explained  that  he  had  captured  the  weapons 
from  the  gendarmerie  by  a  happy  fluke,  and  the  wealthy  citizens  of 
Grande  Riviere,  disgusted  with  the  exactions  of  American  rule,  were 
furnishing  him  with  money.  The  new  army  established  a  camp  at 
Fort  Capois,  at  the  top  of  a  high  hill  five  hours'  walk  from  Grande 
Riviere.  Now  and  then  they  made  an  attack  in  the  neighborhood, 
Conze  keeping  a  secret  list  of  those  who  suffered  serious  damage  and 
never  allowing  his  men  to  give  themselves  over  to  the  drunken  pil- 
laging that  is  so  common  to  caco  warfare.  The  people  accounted  for 
this  by  recalling  that  Conze  had  always  been  a  more  kindly  man  than 
the  average  bandit  leader.  Meanwhile  the  new  chief  continued  his 
recruiting  propaganda.  He  made  personal  appeals  to  those  of  law- 
less tendency,  he  induced  several  smaller  bands  to  join  him,  he  sent 
scurrilous  personal  attacks  on  Captain  Hanneken  to  be  read  in  the 
market-place.  The  law-abiding  citizens  of  Grande  Riviere,  well  aware 
of  the  advantages  of  American  occupation  and  fearful  of  a  caco 
raid,  appealed  to  the  district  commander  to  drive  the  new  band  out 
of  the  region.  Hanneken  reassured  them  in  a  special  meeting  of  the 
town  notables  with  the  assertion  that  he  already  had  a  scheme  on 
foot  that  would  settle  that  rascal  Conze. 

At  the  same  time  be  had  as  many  real  worries  as  the  good  citizens, 
though  of  a  different  nature.  The  first  was  a  threat  by  the  nearest 
marine  commander  to  wipe  out  that  camp  at  Fort  Capois  if  the 
strangely  laggard  gendarme  officer  did  not  do  so.  It  would  have  been 
fatal  to  Hanneken's  plans  to  take  the  marines  into  his  confidence;  the 
merest  whisper  of  a  rumor  travels  with  lightning  speed  in  Haiti.  Be- 
sides Conze  and  his  friend  the  gendarme  "  deserter,"  the  only  per- 
sons whom  he  had  let  into  the  secret  were  his  department  commander 
and  the  chief  of  the  gendarmerie  in  Port  au  Prince.  Even  his  own 
subordinate  officers  were  kept  wholly  ignorant  of  the  real  state  of  af- 
fairs. In  spite  of  this  extreme  care,  he  was  annoyed  by  persistent 


HO          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

rumors  that  the  whole  thing  was  a  "  frame-up."  Conze,  ran  the 
market-place  gossip,  was  really  a  zandolite,  a  "  caterpiller "  in  the 
pay  of  the  Government  and  the  Americans.  General  Charlemagne, 
stationed  far  off  in  the  district  of  Mirebalais,  had  been  warned  to  look 
out  for  him,  a  more  or  less  unnecessary  "  tip,"  since  it  is  natural  to 
Haitian  chiefs  to  be  suspicious  of  their  fellows.  In  vain  Conze  sent 
letters  written  by  his  secretary,  the  "  deserted  "  gendarme,  in  proper 
caco  style  —  most  of  them  dictated  by  Hanneken  —  to  the  big  chief, 
offering  the  assistance  of  his  growing  band.  For  a  month  he  received 
no  reply  whatever.  Then  Charlemagne  wrote  back  in  very  courteous 
terms,  lauding  Conze's  conversion  to  the  cause  of  Haitian  liberty,  but 
constantly  putting  him  off  on  one  polite  pretext  or  another.  These 
letters,  always  sent  by  women  of  caco  sympathies,  were  a  week  or  more 
old  before  the  replies  came  back  through  devious  bandit  channels,  and 
the  situation  often  changed  materially  within  that  length  of  time,  up- 
setting Hanneken's  plans.  Meanwhile  Conze  cleared  the  region  about 
him,  built  houses  for  his  soldiers,  and  made  Fort  Capois  the  talk  of  all 
the  cacos.  Each  new  recruit  was  given  a  draft  of  rum  and  what 
seemed  to  him  a  generous  cash  bounty,  and  better  food  was  served  than 
most  of  them  had  tasted  in  their  lives.  Still  Charlemagne  would  have 
nothing  to  do  with  him  beyond  the  exchange  of  polite,  non-committal 
notes. 

At  length  the  coco-in-chief  sent  one  of  his  trusted  subordinates  to 
report  on  the  situation  at  Fort  Capois.  General  'Tijacques  marched 
into  Conze's  camp  one  evening  at  the  head  of  seventy-five  well-armed 
followers,  every  man  with  a  shell  in  his  chamber.  His  air  was  more 
than  suspicious,  and  he  ended  by  openly  accusing  Conze  of  being  a 
zandolite. 

"  If  I  am,  go  ahead  and  shoot  me ! "  cried  the  latter,  laying  aside  his 
weapons  and  ordering  his  men  to  withdraw.  'Tijacques  declined  the 
invitation,  but  all  night  long  he  and  his  men  sat  about  the  fire,  their 
weapons  in  their  hands,  while  Conze  slept  with  the  apparent  innocence 
of  a  babe.  When  morning  broke  without  an  attack  upon  him,  'Ti- 
jacques was  convinced.  He  kissed  Conze  on  both  cheeks,  complimented 
him  on  joining  the  "  army  of  liberation,"  and  welcomed  him  as  a 
brother  in  arms.  When  Conze  presented  him  with  a  badly  needed 
suit  of  clothes,  a  still  more  desired  bottle  of  rum,  and  money  enough 
to  pay  his  troops  a  week's  salary  of  ten  cents  each,  he  left  avowing 
eternal  friendship. 

A  day  or  two  later  Charlemagne  sent  another  of  his  generals,  Papil- 


THE  DEATH  OF  CHARLEMAGNE  141 

Ipn,  on  a  secret  mission  to  arrest  Conze  and  bring  him  to  his  own 
camp.  It  was«merely  a  lucky  coincidence  that  Hanneken  had  decided 
on  that  very  night  to  "  attack  "  Fort  Capois,  as  he  had  already  done 
several  times  before.  Conze,  who  made  three  nightly  journeys  a  week 
to  Grande  Riviere  on  the  pretext  of  getting  more  money  from  the  in- 
habitants friendly  to  his  cause,  and  entered  Hanneken's  house  through 
the  back  garden,  was  instructed  how  to  conduct  himself  in  the  affair 
to  avoid  personal  injury.  For  all  that,  the  American  had  hard  work 
to  keep  his  gendarmes  from  wiping  out  the  camp  entirely.  In  the 
midst  of  the  fighting  he  slipped  aside  in  the  bushes  and,  smearing  his 
left  arm  with  red  ink,  wrapped  it  up  in  a  bandage  generously  covered 
with  the  same  liquid.  Then  he  sounded  the  retreat,  and  the  gendarmes 
fell  back  pell-mell  on  Grande  Riviere.  The  next  morning  the  market- 
place was  agog  with  the  astonishing  news.  The  cacos  of  Fort  Capois 
had  repulsed  the  gendarmes!  Moreover,  the  great  Conze  himself 
had  wounded  the  redoubtable  American  captain!  It  would  not  be 
long  before  the  bandits  descended  on  Grande  Riviere  itself !  Some  of 
the  frightened  inhabitants  seized  their  valuables  and  fled  to  Cap  Hai- 
tien. 

For  days  Captain  Hanneken  wandered  disconsolately  about  the 
town  with  his  arm  in  a  sling.  When  his  own  officers  or  friends  joggled 
against  it  by  accident,  he  cried  out  with  pain.  His  greatest  difficulty 
was  to  keep  himself  from  being  invalided  to  the  rear,  or  to  keep  the 
solicitous  marine  doctor  from  dressing  his  wounds.  News  of  the 
great  battle  quickly  reached  Charlemagne.  Meanwhile  the  agent  he 
had  sent  to  arrest  Conze  met  'Ti  Jacques  on  the  trail. 

"  You  're  crazy ! "  cried  the  latter  when  Papillon  whispered  his  or- 
ders. "  Conze  is  as  sincere  a  caco  as  you  or  I.  I  will  myself  return  to 
Charlemagne  and  tell  him  so." 

The  report  of  'Ti Jacques,  added  to  the  news  that  Conze  had  wounded 
the  accursed  American  commander,  as  well  as  repulsing  his  force, 
won  the  confidence  of  Charlemagne  —  with  reservations,  of  course; 
he  never  put  full  confidence  in  any  one,  being  too  well  versed  in  Haitian 
history.  He  invited  Conze  to  visit  him  at  his  headquarters.  There  he 
commissioned  him  u  General  Jean,"  thanked  him  in  the  name  of  Haitian 
liberty,  and  promised  to  cooperate  with  him.  Incidentally,  he  relieved 
him  of  the  pearl-handled  revolver  that  had  once  belonged  to  their  com- 
mon enemy,  Hanneken.  It  was  too  fine  a  weapon  to  be  carried  by 
any  one  but  the  commander-in-chief,  he  explained.  Before  they  parted, 
he  promised  the  new  general  to  join  him  some  day  in  Fort  Capois. 


142          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

Meanwhile  the  "  deserted "  gendarme  had  joined  Charlemagne's 
forces  and  had  so  completely  won  his  confidence  that  he  was  made  his 
private  secretary.  He  found  means  of  reporting  conditions  and  plans 
now  and  then  to  Hanneken.  Conze  and  Charlemagne  entered  into 
correspondence  in  planning  a  general  attack  on  Grande  Riviere.  Here 
Hanneken  well  knew  that  he  was  playing  with  fire.  If  anything  went 
wrong  and  Grande  Riviere  was  taken,  nothing  could  keep  the  cacos 
out  of  Cap  Haitien,  the  second  city  of  'Haiti  and  the  key  to  all  the 
northern  half  of  the  country.  Besides,  how  could  he  be  sure  that  his 
agents  were  not  "  double-crossing  "  him  instead  of  Charlemagne  ? 

Negotiations  continued  all  through  the  month  of  October.  Toward 
the  end  of  that  month  Charlemagne,  his  brother  St.  Remy  Peralte, 
several  other  generals,  and  many  chiefs  arrived  at  Fort  Capois,  bring- 
ing with  them  twelve  hundred  bandits.  In  company  with  "  General 
Jean  "  they  planned  a  concerted  attack  on  Grande  Riviere.  At  the  same 
time  the  programs  of  two  other  assaults,  on  the  towns  of  Bahon  and 
Le  Trou,  were  set  for  the  same  date.  The  chief  value  of  the  latter 
was  that  they  would  keep  the  marines  busy  and  leave  the  larger  town 
to  the  protection  of  the  gendarmes. 

Charlemagne's  forces  were  to  approach  Grande  Riviere  from  the 
Fort  Capois  side  and  to  charge  across  the  river  when  they  received 
the  signal  agreed  upon.  Conze's  men  were  to  descend  upon  the  city 
from  the  opposite  direction,  and  "  General  Jean  "  was  to  give  the  signal 
himself  by  firing  three  shots  from  an  old  ruined  fortress  above  the  town. 
As  it  was  well  known  that  Charlemagne  never  attacked  personally  with 
his  troops,  but  hung  back  safely  in  the  rear,  it  had  been  arranged 
through  Conze  that  he  await  events  at  a  place  called  Mazaire  and  enter 
the  city  in  triumph  after  the  news  of  its  capture  had  been  brought  to 
him. 

On  the  night  set,  the  last  one  of  October,  Captain  Hanneken  ordered 
ten  picked  gendarmes  to  report  at  his  residence.  With  them  was  his 
subordinate,  Lieutenant  William  R.  Button,  who  had  just  been  let 
into  the  secret.  The  doors  guarded  against  intrusion,  Hanneken  told 
the  gendarmes  to  lay  aside  their  uniforms  and  put  on  coco-like  rags 
that  had  been  gathered  for  the  occasion.  The  two  Americans  dressed 
themselves  in  similar  garments  and  rubbed  their  faces,  hands,  and  such 
portions  of  their  bodies  as  showed  through  the  tatters,  with  cold  cream 
and  lamp-black.  Then  the  detail  sallied  forth  one  by  one,  to  meet 
at  a  place  designated,  where  rifles  that  had  been  secretly  conveyed  there 
were  issued  to  them. 


THE  DEATH  OF  CHARLEMAGNE  143 

The  pretended  cacos  took  up  their  post  at  Mazaire  behind  a  bushy 
hedge  along  which  Charlemagne  must  pass  if  he  kept  his  rendezvous. 
While  they  lay  there,  Conze  and  his  following  of  real  cacos,  some  seven 
hundred  in  number,  passed  close  by  them  on  their  way  ^o  attack  Grande 
Riviere.  This  had  been  reinforced  with  a  large  number  of  gendarmes 
and  a  machine-gun  manned  by  Americans  under  the  personal  command 
of  the  Department  Commander  of  the  North,  all  barricaded  in  the 
market-place  facing  the  river.  Conze  gave  the  preconcerted  signal,  and 
Charlemagne's  army  dashed  out  of  the  foot-hills  toward  the  stream. 
It  was  only  the  over-eagerness  of  the  barricaded  force,  which  failed 
to  hold  its  fire  long  enough,  that  made  the  caco  casualties  number 
merely  by  the  dozen  rather  than  by  the  hundred. 

At  the  height  of  the  battle  Charlemagne's  private  secretary,  the  "  de- 
serted "  gendarme,  crawled  up  to  Hanneken  and  informed  him  that  the 
caco-in-chief  had  changed  his  mind.  With  his  extraordinary  gift  of 
suspicion,  he  had  smelled  a  rat.  He  would  not  come  down  to  Mazaire 
until  the  actual  winner  of  the  battle  came  to  him  to  announce  the  cap- 
ture of  Grande  Riviere. 

To  say  that  Captain  Hanneken  received  the  news  quietly  is  merely 
another  way  of  stating  that  he  is  not  a  profane  man.  Here  he  had 
planned  and  toiled  for  four  months  to  do  away  with  the  arch  caco  and 
break  the  back  of  the  rebellion  that  was  holding  up  the  advancement 
of  Haiti,  only  to  have  all  his  plans  fail  through  the  over-suspicion  of 
the  outlaw  politician.  He  had  run  the  risk  of  having  the  headquarters 
of  his  district  captured,  with  dire,  far-reaching  results  that  no  one 
realized  better  than  himself.  He  had  played  the  part  of  a  dime-novel 
hero,  descended  to  the  role  of  an  actor,  which  his  forceful,  straight- 
forward nature  detested,  only  to  be  left  the  laughing-stock  of  his  fel- 
low-officers of  the  gendarmerie,  to  say  nothing  of  the  "kidding"  Ma- 
rine Corps,  in  which  he  was  still  a  sergeant.  Incidentally,  he  had 
staked  the  plan  to  the  extent  of  eight  hundred  dollars  of  his  own  money, 
which  there  was  no  hope  of  recovering  through  the  devious  channels 
of  official  reimbursement  if  that  plan  failed,  though  as  a  matter  of  fact 
this  latter  detail  was  the  least  of  his  worries.  It  was  not  a  question  of 
a  few  paltry  dollars,  but  of  success. 

If  all  these  thoughts  passed  through  his  head  as  he  lay  concealed 
in  the  bushes  with  his  dozen  fake  cacos,  they  passed  quickly,  for  his 
next  command  came  almost  instantly.  It  was  by  no  means  the  first 
time  in  this  hide-and-seek  game  with  Charlemagne  that  he  had  been 
forced  to  change  his  plans  completely  on  the  spur  of  the  moment. 


144          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

"  Button,"  he  whispered,  "  we  will  be  the  successful  coco  detachment 
that  brings  the  news  of  the  capture  of  Grande  Riviere  to  Charlemagne." 

Led  by  Jean  Edmond  Frangois,  the  "  deserted  "  gendarme  and  private 
secretary  of  the  caco-in-chief,  the  little  group  set  out  into  the  moun- 
tains. Charlemagne,  said  the  secretary,  had  come  a  part  of  the  way 
down  from  Fort  Capois,  but  had  camped  for  the  night  less  than  half- 
way to  the  town.  It  was  nearing  midnight.  Heavy  clouds  hung  low 
in  the  sky,  but  the  stars  shone  here  and  there  through  them.  For 
three  hours  the  detail  stumbled  upward  along  a  difficult  mountain 
trail.  Neither  of  the  Americans  knew  how  soon  the  gendarmes  would 
lose  their  nerve  and  slip  off  into  the  night,  frightened  out  of  all  dis- 
cipline by  the  dreaded  name  of  Charlemagne.  There  was  no  positive 
proof  that  they  were  not  themselves  being  led  into  an  ambuscade,  and 
they  knew  only  too  well  the  horrible  end  that  would  befall  two  lone 
Americans  captured  by  the  bandits.  To  make  matters  worse,  Button 
was  suffering  from  an  acute  attack  of  his  old  malaria,  though  he  was 
too  much  a  marine  and  a  gendarme  officer  to  let  that  retard  his  steps. 

The  detachment  was  halted  at  last  by  a  caco  sentry,  who  demanded 
the  countersign.  It  happened  that  night  to  be  "  General  Jean,"  in 
honor  of  Charlemagne's  trusted  —  with  reservations  —  ally,  Conze. 
Francois,  the  "  deserted "  gendarme,  gave  it.  The  sentry  recognized 
him  also  as  the  private  secretary  of  the  great  chief.  He  advanced  him, 
but  declined  to  let  the  detail  with  him  pass  without  specific  orders  from 
Charlemagne.  The  secretary  left  his  companions  behind  and  hurried 
on. 

The  disguised  gendarmes  mingled  with  the  caco  outpost  and  an- 
nounced the  capture  of  Grande  Riviere,  adding  that  the  population  was 
eagerly  waiting  to  receive  the  great  Charlemagne  and  his  doughty  war- 
riors. Shouts  of  triumph  rose  and  spread  away  into  the  night.  In 
all  the  years  of  American  occupation  no  town  of  anything  like  the  size 
of  Grande  Riviere  had  ever  been  taken  by  the  cacos.  It  was  the  death- 
knell  of  the  cursed  whites,  who  would  soon  be  driven  from  the  great 
Republic  of  Haiti,  as  they  had  been  many  years  before. 

Nearly  an  hour  after  his  departure  the  secretary  returned,  to  report 
that  Charlemagne  had  ordered  the  detachment  to  come  to  him  im- 
mediately with  the  joyful  news. 

."  But,"  added  Frangois,  "  there  are  six  series  of  outposts  between 
here  and  Charlemagne's  headquarters.  There  is  n't  a  chance  in  the 
world  that  we  can  pass  them  all  without  being  detected,  and  cacos 
swarm  everywhere  along  the  trail.  It  is  a  question  of  turning  back, 


THE  DEATH  OF  CHARLEMAGNE  145 

won  Capitaine,  or  of  leaving  the  trail  and  sneaking  up  over  the  moun- 
tain through  the  brush." 

"  And  lose  ourselves  for  good  and  all,"  added  Hanneken,  in  his  ready 
"  Creole."  "  Nothing  doing.  Take  the  lead  and  keep  to  the  trail." 

The  first  outpost  advanced  the  detachment  without  question.  The 
score  of  negroes  who  made  it  up  seemed  to  be  too  excited  with  the  tak- 
ing of  Grande  Riviere  to  be  any  longer  suspicious.  Some  five  minutes 
later  the  group  was  again  halted,  this  time  by  an  outpost  of  some  forty 
men.  Their  leader  scrutinized  the  newcomers  carefully  one  by  one 
as  they  passed,  the  latter,  in  turn,  shuffling  along  with  bowed  heads, 
as  if  they  were  completely  exhausted  with  the  climb  from  Grande 
Riviere,  which  was  not  far  from  the  truth.  Several  of  the  bandits  along 
the  way  were  heard  to  remark  in  their  slovenly  "  Creole,"  "  Bon  dieu, 
but  those  niggers  are  sure  tired."  The  third  and  fourth  outposts  gave 
the  party  no  trouble,  beyond  demanding  the  countersign,  except  that 
casual  questions  were  flung  at  them  by  the  cacos  scattered  along  the 
trail.  These  the  disguised  gendarmes  answered  without  arousing  sus- 
picion. Perfectly  as  he  knew  "  Creole,"  Hanneken  avoided  speaking 
whenever  possible,  and  left  the  word  to  Francois,  fearful  of  giving  him- 
self away  by  some  hint  of  a  foreign  accent  or  a  mischosen  word  from 
the  southern  dialect,  with  which  he  was  more  familiar.  No  white 
man,  whatever  his  training,  can  equal  the  slovenly,  thick-tongued  pro- 
nunciation of  the  illiterate  Haitian. 

At  the  fifth  outpost  the  leader  was  a  huge,  bulking  negro  as  large 
as  Hanneken,  and  he  stood  on  the  alert,  revolver  half  raised,  as  the 
detail  approached.  The  giving  of  the  countersign  did  not  seem  to 
satisfy  him.  He  looked  Hanneken  up  and  down  suspiciously  and 
asked  him  a  question.  The  captain,  pretending  he  was  out  of  breath, 
mumbled  an  answer  and  stalked  on.  It  happened  to  be  his  good  luck 
that  he  is  blessed  with  high  cheek  bones  and  a  face  that  would  not  be 
instantly  recognized  as  Caucasian  on  a  dark  night.  Button,  on  the 
other  hand,  seemed  to  arouse  new  suspicion.  He  was  carrying  an 
automatic  rifle  and,  in  order  to  conceal  the  magazine,  bore  it  vertically 
across  his  chest,  his  arms  folded  over  it.  The  negro  sentry  caught 
the  glint  of  the  barrel  and  snatched  Button  by  the  arm. 

"  Where  did  you  get  such  a  fine-looking  rifle  ?  "  he  demanded. 

Hanneken,  scenting  trouble,  had  halted  several  paces  beyond,  his 
hands  on  the  butts  of  the  revolver  and  the  automatic  which  he  carried 
on  his  respective  hips.  It  would  have  been  easy  to  kill  the  suspicious 
negro,  but  that  would  have  been  the  end  of  his  hopes  of  reaching 


146          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

Charlemagne  —  and  probably  of  the  two  Americans.  For  though  the 
disguised  gendarmes  were  all  armed  with  carbines,  they  would  have 
been  no  match  for  the  swarms  of  cacos  about  them,  even  if  their  taut 
nerves  did  not  give  way  in  flight  under  the  strain. 

Button,  however  was  equal  to  the  occasion. 

"Let  me  go!"  he  panted,  jerking  away  from  the  negro  leader. 
"  Don't  you  see  that  my  chief  is  getting  out  of  sight?  " 

The  black  giant,  still  suspicious,  yielded  with  bad  grace,  and  the 
Americans  hurried  on.  The  sixth  outpost  was  the  immediate  guard 
over  Charlemagne,  about  thirty  paces  from  where  he  had  spread  his 
blanket  for  the  night.  Frangois  gave  the  countersign,  took  two  or  three 
steps  forward,  whispered  in  Hanneken's  ear,  "  he  is  up  there,"  and 
slipped  away  into  the  bushes.  The  gendarmes  had  likewise  disap- 
peared. The  Americans  advanced  to  within  fifteen  feet  of  a  faintly 
blazing  camp-fire.  On  the  opposite  side  of  it  a  man  stood  erect,  his 
silk  shirt  gleaming  in  the  flickering  light.  He  was  peering  suspiciously 
over  the  fire,  trying  to  recognize  the  newcomers.  A  woman  was 
kneeling  beside  the  heap  of  fagots,  coaxing  it  to  blaze.  A  hundred  or 
more  cacos  were  lined  up  to  the  right,  at  a  respectful  distance  from  the 
peering  chief. 

Two  negroes,  armed  with  rifles,  halted  the  Americans,  at  the  same 
time  cocking  their  pieces.  Hanneken  raised  his  black,  invisible  auto- 
matic and  fired  at  the  chief  beyond  the  fire,  at  the  same  time  shouting, 
"  Let  her  go,  Button !  "  in  an  instant  the  kneeling  woman  scattered  the 
fire  with  a  sweeping  gesture  and  plunged  the  spot  in  darkness.  But- 
ton was  spraying  the  line  of  cacos  to  the  right  with  his  machine-gun. 
The  disguised  gendarmes  came  racing  up  and  lent  new  legs  to  the  flee- 
ing bandits.  When  a  space  had  been  cleared,  Hanneken  placed  his 
handful  of  soldiers  in  a  position  to  offset  a  counter-attack,  and  began 
groping  about  the  extinguished  fire.  His  hands  encountered  a  dead 
body  dressed  in  a  silk  shirt.  This,  however,  was  no  proof  that  his  mis- 
sion had  been  accomplished.  Some  of  Charlemagne's  staff  might  have 
boasted  silk  shirts,  also.  He  ran  his  hands  down  the  body  to  a  holster 
and  drew  out  the  pearl-handled  revolver  which  he  had  loaned  to  Conze, 
and  which  had  been  appropriated  in  turn  by  Charlemagne.  The  caco- 
in-chief  had  been  shot  squarely  through  the  heart. 

When  daylight  came,  the  hilltop  was  found  to  be  strewn  with  the 
bodies  of  nine  other  bandits,  while  trails  of  blood  showed  that  many 
more  had  dragged  themselves  off  into  the  bushes.  Among  the  wounded, 
it  was  discovered  later,  was  St.  Remy,  the  brother  of  Charlemagne, 


THE  DEATH  OF  CHARLEMAGNE  147 

who  afterward  died  of  his  wounds.  The  captured  booty  included  nine 
rifles,  three  revolvers,  two  hundred  rounds  of  ammunition,  seven  swords, 
fifteen  horses  and  mules,  and  Charlemagne's  voluminous  correspon- 
dence. This  latter  was  of  special  value,  since  it  contained  the  names 
of  the  good  citizens  of  Port  au  Prince  and  the  other  larger  cities  who 
had  been  financing  the  caco-in-chief.  Most  of  them  are  now  languish- 
ing in  prison.  But  let  me  yield  the  floor  to  Captain  Hanneken's  of- 
ficial diary  of  the  events  that  followed.  Its  succinctness  is  suggestive 
of  the  character  of  the  man : 

Nov.  i,  1919. —  Killed  Charlemagne  Peralte,  Commander-in-Chief  of  the 
bandits.  Wounded  St.  Remy  Peralte.  Brought  Charlemagne's  body  to  Grande 
Riviere,  arriving  9  A.  M.  Went  to  Cap  Haitien  with  the  body.  Received  orders 
to  proceed  to  Fort  Capois  next  morning.  Went  to  Grande  Riviere  via  handcar, 
arriving  9  p.  M.  Wrote  report  re  death  of  Charlemagne.  Left  Grande  Riviere 
with  seven  gendarmes,  via  handcar  to  Bahon,  arriving  midnight. 

Nov.  2. —  Left  Bahon  i  A.  M.  with  seven  gendarmes.  Arrived  200  yards  from 
first  outpost  of  Fort  Capois  at  5  A.  M.  Crawled  to  150  yards  from  outpost  and 
remained  there  until  6 130  A.  M.,  waiting  for  detachment  from  Le  Trou  to  attack 
at  daybreak,  when  six  bandits  came  in  our  direction.  Opened  fire,  killing  three. 
All  bandits  in  various  outposts  retreated  to  main  fort.  Advanced  and  captured 
the  first,  second,  and  third  outposts.  Got  within  300  yards  of  fort  when  they 
opened  fire  from  behind  a  stonewall  barricade.  They  fired  a  cannon  and  about 
40  rifle  shots.  Crawled  on  our  stomachs,  no  cover.  Fired  the  machine  gun  and 
ordered  the  gendarmes  to  advance  15  yards  and  open  fire.  Kept  this  up  until 
we  arrived  within  150  yards,  when  we  espied  the  bandits  escaping.  Entered  fort, 
burned  all  huts  and  outposts.  Left  Fort  Capois  at  9  A.  M.  Arrived  in  Grande 
Riviere  2  p.  M.,  very  tired. 

The  most  exacting  military  superior  cannot  but  have  excused  this 
last  somewhat  unmilitary  remark.  Fatigue  does  not  rest  long  on 
Captain  Hanneken's  broad  shoulders,  however,  and  he  soon  had  his 
district  cleared  again  of  the  cacos  he  had  imported  for  the  occasion. 
The  two-thousand-dollar  reward  was  divided  between  Conze  and  his 
one  civilian  assistant.  Captain  Hanneken,  Lieutenant  Button,  and  the 
gendarmes  who  accompanied  them,  were  ordered  to  Port  au  Prince  to 
be  personally  thanked  by  the  President  of  Haiti  and  decorated  with 
the  Haitian  medaille  d'honneur,  a  ceremony  against  which  the  captain 
protested  as  a  waste  of  time  that  he  could  better  employ  in  hunting 
cacos.  At  this  writing  he  is  engaged  again  in  his  favorite  sport  in 
another  district.  His  Marine  Corps  rank  has  been  raised  to  that  of 
second  lieutenant,  while  Conze  has  been  appointed  to  the  same  grade 
in  the  Gendarmerie  d'Haiti,  with  assignment  to  plain-clothes  duty. 

The  death  of  Charlemagne  has  probably  broken  the  back  of  cacoism 


148          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

in  Haiti,  though  it  has  been  by  no  means  wiped  out.  Papillon,  with 
'Tijacques  and  several  other  rascals  as  chief  assistants,  is  still  roaming 
at  large  in  the  north,  and  the  youthful  Benoit  is  terrorizing  the  moun- 
tainous region  in  the  neighborhood  of  Mirebalais  and  Las  Cahobas. 
But  the  gendarmerie,  assisted  by  the  Marine  Corps,  may  be  trusted  to 
bring  their  troublesome  careers  to  a  close  all  in  good  season.  One  of 
the  chief  problems  of  the  pacifiers  at  present  is  to  convince  the  ignorant 
caco  rank  and  file  that  the  great  Charlemagne  is  dead.  His  supersti- 
tious followers  credit  him  with  supernatural  powers,  and  many  a  cap- 
tured bandit,  when  asked  who  is  now  his  commander-in-chief,  still 
replies  with  faithful  simplicity,  "  Mais,  c'est  Charlemagne."  The 
public  display  of  his  body  at  Grande  Riviere  and  Cap  Haiitien  produced 
an  effect  that  will  not  soon  be  forgotten  by  those  who  witnessed  it, 
but  even  that  has  not  fully  convinced  the  cacos  hidden  far  away  in  the 
mountains.  So  great  was  the  veneration,  or,  more  exactly,  perhaps, 
the  superstition,  in  which  he  was  held  that  it  was  found  necessary  to 
give  him  five  fake  funerals  in  as  many  different  places,  as  a  blind, 
and  to  bury  his  body  secretly  in  the  out-of-the-way  spot,  lest  his  grave 
become  a  shrine  of  pilgrimage  for  future  cacos. 


CHAPTER  VII 

HITHER   AND   YON    IN    THE    HAITIAN    BUSH 

OF  many  journeys  about  Haiti,  usually  by  automobile  and  in 
the  company  of  gendarme  officers,  the  first  was  to  the  caco- 
infested  district  of  Las  Cahobas.  A  marine  doctor  bound  on 
an  inspection  trip  there  had  a  seat  left  after  his  assistant  and  a  native 
gendarme  had  been  accommodated.  Among  the  four  of  us  there  were 
as  many  revolvers  and  three  rifles,  all  ready  for  instant  action.  One 
can,  of  course,  hire  private  cars  for  a  tour  of  Haiti,  but  quite  aside  from 
the  decided  expense,  a  Haitian  chauffeur  under  military  orders  is  much 
to  be  preferred  to  one  who  is  subject  to  his  own  whims;  moreover, 
there  is  much  more  to  be  seen  and  heard  in  gendarme  company,  and, 
lastly,  if  one  chances  to  "  pop  off  "  a  caco,  there  is  not  even  the  trouble 
of  explaining,  for  one's  companions  will  do  that  in  their  laconic  report 
to  headquarters. 

There  are  few  roads  in  the  West  Indies  as  crowded  as  that  broad  new 
highway  across  the  plain  which  is  a  continuation  of  the  wide  main 
street  of  Port  au  Prince.  By  it  all  traffic  from  the  north  and  west 
enters  the  capital.  The  overwhelming  majority  of  travelers  are  market- 
women,  most  of  them  barefooted  and  afoot,  but  a  large  number  are 
seated  sidewise  on  their  donkeys  or  small  mules,  balancing  on  their 
toes  the  slippers,  which  are  never  known  to  fall  off  under  any  provo- 
cation. Pedestrians  carry  their  invariably  heavy  and  cumbersome  loads 
on  their  heads,  the  haughtier  class  in  crude  saddle-bags,  and  the  sight 
of  this  river  of  jogging  humanity,  often  completely  filling  the  broad 
highway  as  far  as  it*  can  be  seen  in  the  heat-hazy  distance,  is  one  of 
which  we  never  tired  as  often  as  we  rode  out  through  it. 

At  the  time  of  the  outbreak  against  the  French  the  population 
roughly  was  made  up  of  thirty  thousand  whites,  as  many  "  people  of 
color,"  and  four  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  blacks.  There  has  been, 
of  course,  no  census  since  that  time,  but  signs  indicate  that  Haiti  has 
now  two  and  a  half  million  inhabitants,  for  however  unproductive  the 
semi-savage  hordes  may  be  in  other  ways,  they  are  diligent  in  the 
process  of  multiplication.  White  people  are  more  rare  to-day,  even  if  one 
count  our  forces  of  occupation,  than  before  the  revolt,  the  mixed  race 

149 


150  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

has  not  greatly  increased,  so  that  fully  nine  tenths  of  the  population 
are  full-blooded  Africans.  Close  observers  are  convinced  that,  thanks 
mainly  to  the  constant  revolutions,  there  are  three  females  to  every 
male,  and  of  the  latter  a  considerable  number  are  now  roaming  the 
hills  of  the  interior  as  cacos.  Furthermore,  the  men  take  little  part  in 
selling  the  country  produce.  The  result  is  that  the  stream  of  humanity 
pouring  into  the  capital  is  almost  entirely  made  up  of  jet-black  women 
and  girls. 

The  throng  was  particularly  dense  on  the  morning  of  our  journey  to 
Las  Cahobas,  for  it  was  Friday,  and  the  great  weekly  market  in  Port 
au  Prince  begins  at  dawn  on  Saturday  morning.  An  American  once 
stationed  himself  at  the  typical  negro  arch  of  triumph,  straddling  the 
entrance  from  the  Cul-de-Sac  to  the  capital,  and  counted  thirty  thou- 
sand travelers  in  an  hour,  of  whom  all  but  about  two  hundred  were 
market-women.  They  were  somewhat  less  multitudinous  during  our 
stay  in  Haiti,  for  the  Americans  had  recently  set  a  maximum  scale  of 
prices  for  food-stuffs,  and  many  of  the  women  had  gone  on  strike  and 
refused  to  bring  their  produce  to  town.  They  had  another  grievance  in 
the  requirement  to  sell  most  things  by  weight.  For  generations  they 
had  sold  only  by  the  "  pile,"  consisting  of  three  articles  of  such  things 
as  eggs,  plantains,  yams,  and  the  like,  or  of  tiny  heaps  in  the  case  of 
grains  and  similar  produce ;  few  of  them,  moreover,  could  afford  to 
buy  scales,  and  they  resented  the  right  given  purchasers  to  appeal  to 
gendarmes  stationed  in  the  market-places  for  the  verifying  of  weights. 
But  only  those  who  had  seen  it  under  still  more  crowded  conditions 
would  have  realized  that  the  highway  was  not  thronged  to  its  full 
density  on  this  particular  morning. 

Through  the  main  street,  out  past  the  only  modern  sugar-mill  in 
Haiti,  for  miles  across  the  plain,  our  constantly  honking  Ford  plowed 
through  this  endless  procession  of  black  humanity,  casting  it  aside  in 
two  turbulent  furrows  of  donkeys,  mules,  women,  and  multifarious 
bundles.  There  is  nothing  more  amusing,  and  pathetic,  too,  than  the 
behavior  of  the  primitive  masses  of  Haiti  before  an  automobile.  This 
is  scarcely  to  be  wondered  at  in  a  country  where  any  wheeled  traffic 
except  a  very  rare  ox-cart  crawling  along  on  its  creaking  and  wobbling 
wheels  was  unknown  up  to  a  few  years  ago,  and  where  the  half-dozen 
automobiles  of  Port  au  Prince  could  not  make  their  way  into  the  coun- 
try until  the  Americans  had  begun  the  reconstruction  of  the  roads. 
But  it  is  proof,  too,  of  the  close  relationship  of  the  Haitians  to  their 
savage  brethren  in  central  Africa.  Just  like  this,  one  can  easily  imag- 


IN  THE  HAITIAN  BUSH  151 

ine,  the  latter  would  act  at  the  sudden  apparition  of  a  strange  machine 
which  the  great  mass  of  Haitians  firmly  believe  is  run  by  voodoo  spirits 
devoted  to  the  white  man. 

The  highway,  like  most  of  those  the  Americans  have  built,  is  of 
boulevard  width,  and  there  is  ample  room  for  even  such  a  throng  as 
this  to  pass  an  automobile  in  safety.  But  the  primitive-minded  natives 
are  terror-stricken  at  sight  of  one  bearing  down  upon  them.  The 
mounted  women  invariably  tumble  off  their  animals  and  fall  to  beating, 
pushing,  and  dragging  them  to  the  extreme  edge  of  the  road,  at  the 
same  time  shrieking  as  if  the  Grim  Reaper  had  suddenly  appeared  be- 
fore them  with  his  sickle  poised.  The  pedestrians  succumb  to  a  similar 
panic,  so  that  the  journey  out  the  flat  highway  presents  a  constant  vista 
of  dismounting  women  and  a  turmoil  of  animals  and  frightened  human 
beings  tumbling  over  one  another  in  their  excited  eagerness  to  get  well 
out  of  reach  of  the  swiftly  approaching  demon  of  destruction.  Farther 
on,  where  the  road  begins  to  wind,  and  the  cuts  into  the  hills  are  often 
deep,  the  scene  is  still  more  laughter-provoking,  for  the  startled  animals 
invariably  bury  their  noses  in  the  sheer  road-banks  and  will  not,  for  all 
the  cajolery  or  threats  in  the  world,  swing  in  sidewise  along  them.  If 
they  are  donkeys,  the  women  pick  up  their  hind  quarters  and  lift  them 
out  of  the  way  by  main  force;  when  they  are  too  large  for  this  cou- 
rageous treatment,  the  riders  put  a  shoulder  to  the  quivering  rumps, 
abandon  those  useless  tactics  to  drag  at  the  halters  as  the  machine 
draws  nearer,  and  finally  bury  their  faces  also  in  the  bank,  as  if  to 
shut  out  the  horrible  experience  of  seeing  their  precious  animals  muti- 
lated beyond  recognition. 

Still  more  distracting  to  drivers  is  the  behavior  of  persons  approached 
from  the  rear.  A  horn  is  of  little  use  in  this  case.  The  Haitian's 
hearing  is  acute  enough,  but  his  mind  does  not  synchronize  in  its  vari- 
ous faculties ;  he  is  aware  of  a  disagreeable  noise  behind  him,  but  that 
noise  does  not  registef  as  a  warning  of  danger  and  a  call  for  action. 
Then,  when  at  last  he  realizes  that  it  means  something  and  is  addressed 
to  him,  or  when  the  bumper  or  fender  touches  his  ragged  coat-tail,  he  is 
electrified  into  record-breaking  activity.  Unfortunately,  his  psychology 
is  that  of  the  chicken,  and  in  eight  cases  out  of  ten  he  darts  across  the 
road  instead  of  withdrawing  to  the  side  of  it.  This  happens  even  when 
he  is  far  out  of  danger  at  the  edge  of  a  wide  street  or  highway,  and 
every  automobile  trip  through  the  crowded  parts  of  Haiti  is  a  constant 
succession  of  interweaving  pedestrians  bent  on  getting  to  the  opposite 
side  of  the  road. 


152          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

An  American  estate  manager  who  drives  a  heavy  car  at  a  high  rate 
of  speed,  yet  who  is  noted  for  his  freedom  from  accidents,  was  bowling 
alone  one  September  afternoon  far  out  in  the  country.  The  road  was 
twenty-two  feet  wide,  and  he  was  driving  to  the  right  of  it,  without  an 
animate  object  in  sight  except  for  one  ragged  countryman  plodding 
along  the  extreme  left  in  the  same  direction.  Seeing  no  reason  to  do  so, 
he  did  not  blow  his  horn.  Suddenly  the  pedestrian  caught  sight  of  the 
car  out  of  the  tail  of  an  eye  and  darted  across  the  road.  The  machine 
struck  him  squarely  and  knocked  him,  as  was  afterward  proved  by 
measurement,  fifty-two  feet,  then  ran  completely  over  him.  The  driver 
hurried  him  back  to  a  hospital,  where  it  was  found  that  the  only  injuries 
he  had  sustained  were  a  few  minor  bruises  and  a  gash  on  the  head. 
This  was  treated,  and  a  few  days  later  he  was  discharged,  and  returned 
to  his  hut,  where  he  died  the  next  week  of  blood  poisoning  caused  by 
the  native  healer  whom  he  insisted  on  having  redress  his  almost  healed 
wound. 

Though  somewhat  stony  and  grown  with  an  ugly,  thorny  vegetation, 
the  great  Cul-de-Sac  plain  is  noted  for  its  fertility.  Here  the  aborigines 
cultivated  cotton  and  tobacco;  at  the  time  of  French  expulsion  it  had 
nearly  seven  thousand  plantations,  chiefly  of  sugar-cane,  which  was 
brought  to  Haiti  from  the  Canary  Islands  early  in  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury. The  French  had  covered  it  with  a  thorough  irrigation  system, 
with  a  grand  bassin  in  the  hills  above  and  streams  of  water  spreading 
from  it  like  the  fingers  of  the  hand  to  all  parts  of  the  plain.  There 
were  numerous  splendid  highways  between  towns  and  estates,  and  the 
ninety  thousand  acres  were  dotted  with  fine  residences,  hundreds  of 
sugar-mills,  and  many  coffee,  cotton,  and  indigo  works.  To-day  the 
roads  which  our  forces  of  occupation,  or  the  two  American  companies 
that  are  beginning  to  reclaim  some  of  the  plain,  have  not  found  time 
to  restore  are  rutty  successions  of  mud-holes  so  narrowed  by  ever- 
encroaching  vegetation  as  to  resemble  the  trails  of  blackest  Africa,  or 
have  disappeared  entirely.  There  are  a  few  rude  bridges,  usually 
patched  upon  the  crumbling  remains  of  once  fine  French  structures,  but 
as  a  rule  streams  are  forded.  Except  where  the  newcomers  have 
constructed  new  ones,  the  saying  in  Haiti  is,  "  Never  cross  a  bridge  if 
you  can  go  around  it."  Many  of  the  former  estates  are  completely 
overgrown  with  brush  and  broken  walls,  trees  rise  from  former 
courtyards,  the  remnants  of  once  sumptuous  halls  are  the  haunts  of 
bats,  night  birds,  and  lizards.  In  some  of  the  less  dilapidated  ruins 
negro  families  now  cluster;  most  of  them  live  in  shanties  patched  to- 


IN  THE  HAITIAN  BUSH  153 

gather  of  jungle  rubbish,  their  only  furnishings  a  sleeping-net  and  a 
German  enamelvvare  pot.  Whatever  else  he  lacks,  the  Haitian  always 
has  the  latter,  its  holes  stopped  with  corncobs  until  they  become  too 
large,  when  the  pot  is  filled  with  earth,  planted  with  flowers,  and  set  up 
in  a  conspicuous  position  about  the  hovel.  Everywhere  are  to  be  found 
reminders  of  the  prosperous  days  when  Haiti  was  France's  richest 
colony.  Large,  semispherical  iron  sugar-kettles,  rusted,  broken,  and 
full  of  holes,  lie  tumbled  everywhere  along  the  highway  and  across  the 
plain.  Old  French  bells  bearing  pre-Napoleonic  dates  and  quaint  in- 
scriptions, ruined  stone  aqueducts,  mammoth  grass-grown  stairways, 
rust-eaten  machinery,  inexplicable  stone  ruins  of  all  shapes  and  sizes, 
are  stumbled  upon  wherever  the  visitor  rambles. 

The  characteristic  sour  stench  of  a  dirty  little  sugar-  and  rum-mill 
only  rarely  assails  the  nostrils.  The  natives  have  lost  not  only  the 
energy,  but  almost  the  knowledge,  required  for  the  growing  and  making 
of  sugar,  producing  only  rapadoue,  dark -brown  lumps  of  crude,  coagu- 
lated molasses,  which,  wrapped  in  leaves,  are  to  be  found  in  every 
Haitian  market.  The  American  companies  found  the  people  so  igno- 
rant of  agricultural  methods  that  it  was  impossible  to  introduce  the 
colono  system.  The  men  and  women  who  work  in  the  sugar-  and 
cotton-fields  of  these  new  enterprises  are  as  patched  and  ragged  a  crew 
as  can  be  found  on  the  earth's  surface.  The  average  daily  wage  for 
adult  male  laborers  in  Haiti  is  a  gourde,  or  twenty  cents,  a  day,  women 
and  boys  in  proportion.  The  new  companies  have  raised  this  to  thirty 
cents.  In  theory  the  laborers  are  fed  by  their  employers,  but  it  would 
be  considerable  exaggeration  to  call  the  one  gourdful  of  rice-and-bean 
hash  which  a  disheveled,  yet  dictatorial,  old  negro  woman  was  dishing 
out  to  each  of  a  long  line  of  gaunt  and  soil-stained  workmen  on  one 
of  the  estates  at  which  we  stopped  one  evening  the  nourishment  needed 
for  a  long  day  in  the  fields.  Except  for  a  sugar-cane,  a  lump  of 
rapadoue,  or  possibly  a  bit  of  rice  or  plantain,  which  they  find  for  them- 
selves in  the  morning,  this  is  the  only  food  of  the  Haitian  field  laborer. 
So  lazy  have  they  become  in  their  masterless  condition  that  this  one 
meal  a  day  has  come  to  be  the  habitual  diet  of  the  masses  and  all  they 
expect  of  their  employers;  but  the  impression  on  both  sides  that  this 
is  all  they  need  is  probably  costing  the  companies  more  in  lack  of 
efficient  labor  than  they  themselves  realize.  Only  at  one  season  during 
the  year  does  the  average  Haitian  get  more  than  these  slim  pickings ; 
that  is  in  mango-time,  and  then  the  roads  and  trails  are  carpeted  with 
the  yellow  pits. 


154          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

Dusty,  thorny,  and  hot,  the  Cul-de-Sac  plain  continued  as  level  as  the 
sea  at  its  edge  to  where  we  began  to  climb  the  steep  slope  of  wrinkled, 
rusty  mountains  shutting  it  off  abruptly  on  the  north  and  offering  a 
panorama  of  rare  beauty  from  Port  au  Prince,  particularly  when  sun- 
rise or  sunset  gives  them  a  dozen  swiftly  changing  colors.  As  we  rose 
above  it,  the  reedy  edged  first  of  two  large  lakes,  one  of  which  stretches 
on  into  the  Republic  of  Santo  Domingo,  broke  the  red-brown  carpet 
with  a  contrasting  shimmer  of  blue  at  the  eastern  end,  and  the  moun- 
tains behind  the  capital  stood  forth  in  silhouette  against  the  transparent 
tropical  sky.  The  aboriginal  name  "  Haiti "  means  a  high  and  moun- 
tainous land;  like  its  inhabitants,  its  scenery  and  vegetation  are  more 
savage  than  those  of  Cuba.  So  steep  was  the  new  road  climbing  di- 
agonally up  the  face  of  the  range  that  we  were  twice  compelled  to  dis- 
mount and  call  upon  a  gang  of  road  laborers  to  push  the  machine 
over  the  next  stony  rise.  The  stream  of  market-women  continued  to 
pour  down  this  in  cascades.  Many  of  the  heavy  black  faces  would  have 
made  splendid  gargoyles.  Almost  all  of  the  women  wore  gowns  of 
blue  denim ;  the  year  before,  the  driver  said,  they  had  all  worn  purple, 
but  the  style  had  changed  only  in  color.  Once  we  met  a  lone  marine, 
and  higher  up  paused  at  a  camp  where  there  were  several  of  them. 
But  they  were  not  the  spick-and-span  "  leather-necks  "  we  know  taking 
their  shore  leave  along  Broadway.  They  wore  only  the  indispensable 
parts  of  their  uniforms,  on  the  faces  of  those  old  enough  to  produce  it 
was  a  week's  growth  of  beard,  and  they  clutched  their  rifles  with  the 
alert  and  ready  air  of  expecting  to  use  them  at  any  moment,  for  we 
were  now  entering  a  region  constantly  harassed  by  cacos. 

We  grasped  our  own  weapons  and  closely  watched  the  brush-covered 
banks  on  each  hand,  as  well  as  every  approaching  traveler.  There  are 
only  two  ways  of  telling  a  caco  from  a  harmless  Haitian ;  if  he  is  armed 
or  if  he  runs.  Then  the  orders  are  to  fire,  for  the  "  good  citizens  "  do 
not  carry  weapons  and  are  very  careful  to  move  slowly  and  be  pre- 
pared to  flourish  their  bon  habitant  card  at  sight  of  a  white  face  or  a 
gendarme  uniform.  Several  times  I  fancied  for  an  instant  that  we 
had  been  attacked,  until  I  grew  accustomed  to  the  thump  of  stones  with 
which  the  road  was  ever  more  thickly  strewn  striking  the  bottom  of  the 
car  with  reports  startlingly  like  rifle-shots.  From  the  crest  of  the  first 
range  we  descended  into  the  Artibonite  Valley,  remarkable  for  its 
colors.  A  constant  series  of  rusty  red  humps,  more  beautiful  at  a  dis- 
tance, no  doubt,  than  to  a  hungry  marine  climbing  over  them  expecting 
at  any  moment  to  run  into  a  caco  ambush,  patches  of  scenery  almost 


IN  THE  HAITIAN  BUSH  155 

equal  to  the  Alps  in  color,  slender  pines  standing  out  against  the  red 
and  tumbled  background,  here  and  there  a  clump  of  palm-trees  to  give 
contrast  and  a  suggestion  of  peaceful  tropical  languor,  spread  before 
us  farther  than  the  eye  could  see. 

As  far  as  the  marine-garrisoned  town  of  Mirebalais  the  road  was 
passable,  though  it  had  steadily  deteriorated  from  the  modern  highway 
of  the  plain  to  a  road  made  only  by  the  feet  of  animals  and  men.  It 
would  have  been  an  exceedingly  optimistic  stranger,  however,  who 
could  ever  have  attempted  to  drive  an  automobile  over  the  mountain 
trail  that  lay  beyond,  yet  over  which  the  doughty  Ford  climbed  as 
if  military  orders  forbade  it  to  give  up  so  long  as  it  retained  a  gasp  of 
life.  Here  and  there  we  forded  a  considerable  stream,  meeting  at  one 
of  them  a  group  of  marines  driving  pack-laden  donkeys  and  cattle,  in 
some  cases  astride  the  latter,  more  often  splashing  thigh-deep  through 
the  water,  and  with  a  score  of  produce-bearing  natives  plodding  at 
their  heels  for  protection.  Farther  on  we  passed  an  airplane  camp, 
from  which  "  God's  wicked  angels,"  as  the  natives  call  them,  periodi- 
cally bombard  the  retreats  of  the  cacos.  Rumor  has  it  that  these  war- 
riors of  the  air  have  not  always  made  certain  of  the  character  of  the 
gatherings  they  attack,  and  the  cacos  once  sent  a  protest  to  England 
against  the  Americans  for  using  a  means  of  warfare  which  the  "  Haiti- 
ans fighting  for  their  liberty  "  cannot  combat  or  imitate. 

The  name  of  Las  Cahobas,  the  old  Spanish  form  of  the  word  for 
mahogany-trees,  is  an  indication  of  the  fact  that  it  was  formerly  within 
the  territory  of  Santo  Domingo.  It  is  a  miserable  little  town  in  which 
the  palm-trunk  huts  that  are  the  lowest  form  of  dwelling  in  Cuba  are 
considered  residences  de  luxe.  A  whitewashed  jail  where  the  hundred 
or  more  black  inmates,  most  simply  dressed  in  two-piece  suits  of  red- 
and-white  striped  cotton,  seem  only  too  glad  to  get  their  three  meals 
a  day,  two  of  them  with  meat  rations,  was  the  chief  sight  of  interest. 
Some  of  the  gendarme  guards  had  become  so  thoroughly  Americanized 
under  their  marine  officers  that  they  "  rolled  their  own,"  closed  their 
tobacco-sacks  with  their  teeth,  and  returned  them  to  hip-pockets  exactly 
as  required  by  our  military  manuals.  It  is  remarkable  what  can  be 
done  with  a  backward  race  under  proper  guidance.  The  officers  them- 
selves, nearly  all  enlisted  men  in  the  organization  from  which  they  had 
been  loaned,  were,  like  most  of  those  I  met  throughout  the  country, 
forceful,  energetic,  efficient  chaps,  many  of  whom  spoke  the  native 
"  Creole  "  as  if  they  had  been  born  in  the  district.  In  the  North  we 
scarcely  think  of  a  corporal  or  sergeant  of  marines  as  standing  par- 


156  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

ticularly  high  in  the  social  scale;  in  these  Haitian  villages  they  have 
almost  the  power  of  absolute  monarchs,  and  are  treated  with  corre- 
sponding respect  by  their  native  subjects.  Even  the  village  accounts 
are  periodically  brought  to  them  to  be  audited.  So  accustomed  do  the 
Haitians  become  to  obeying  the  commander  of  the  district  in  which 
they  live  that  it  is  difficult  to  get  them  to  change  their  allegiance.  A 
marine  major  who  had  long  reigned  in  a  certain  region  summoned  all 
the  native  authorities  to  meet  a  newly  arrived  lieutenant  colonel,  ex- 
plaining that  the  latter  was  thereafter  the  commander  in  chief ;  yet  as 
long  as  the  major  remained,  he  never  broke  the  natives  of  the  habit  of 
appealing  to  him  first  of  all  whenever  any  official  matter  turned  up. 

On  the  edge  of  Las  Cahobas,  as  here  and  there  along  the  road  to 
it,  was  a  Haitian  cemetery.  These  are  invariably  bare  and  sun- 
scorched,  the  graves  covered  with  vault-shaped  structures  ranging  from 
heaped-up  cobbles  to  almost  elaborate  stone  and  plaster  mounds.  With- 
out crosses  or  any  other  indication  of  the  Christian  faith,  they  seem 
to  be  direct  importations  from  the  interior  of  Africa,  and  though  one 
knows  that  the  stones  are  piled  there  primarily  to  keep  the  energetic 
Haitian  pigs  from  rooting  up  and  feasting  on  the  corpses,  it  is  hard 
to  think  of  them  as  anything  but  the  African's  protection  against  the 
voodoo  spirits  which  must  be  forcibly  prevented  from  escaping  out  of 
bodies  committed  to  the  earth.  The  usual  Haitian  funeral  is  accom- 
panied with  strange  rites  destined  to  exorcise  these  same  spirits,  after 
which  others  of  a  totally  different  nature  enliven  the  proceedings,  for 
the  corpse  is  generally  carried  on  the  heads  of  men  who  dance  and  sing 
in  a  drunken  orgy  all  the  way  to  the  burial-ground. 

Market-women  were  still  straggling  toward  town  when  we  returned. 
The  view  of  the  Cul-de-Sac  plain  toward  sunset,  carpeted  with  brown 
and  green  vegetation,  speckled  here  and  there  with  little  houses,  the 
lakes  on  the  left  and  the  ocean  on  the  right  reflecting  the  colors  of  the 
purple  and  lilac  clouds  which  hung  above  the  mountains,  was  as  strik- 
ing as  any  I  had  seen  in  many  a  day.  Nearer  the  capital  the  road  was 
still  almost  crowded,  while  here  and  there  under  the  trees  beside  it  the 
women,  their  big  straw  hats  off  now,  but  still  wearing  their  brilliant 
bandanas,  had  camped  for  the  night,  and  were  cooking  their  humble 
dinners  on  fagot  fires.  Once  we  found  a  woman  bareheaded,  but  this 
was  because  she  was  tearing  her  hair  and  shrieking  in  what  seemed  to 
be  physical  agony.  As  she  caught  sight  of  my  uniformed  companions, 
she  rushed  out  upon  them  and  reported  that  she  had  been  robbed  by 
cacos  of  the  produce  she  had  expected  to  spread  out  in  the  big  market- 


IN  THE  HAITIAN  BUSH  157 

square  before  the  cathedral  by  the  dawn  of  Saturday.  Such  things 
happen  even  on  the  broad  highway  into  Port  au  Prince,  while  more 
often  still  gendarmes  are  sent  out  along  the  road  by  some  colonel  or 
major  whose  wife  has  invited  guests,  with  orders  to  buy  the  chickens 
and  turkeys  needed  before  they  reach  the  close  competition  of  the 
market.  In  either  case  the  women  are  deeply  disgruntled,  for  the  mere 
selling  is  only  half  their  pleasure  in  offering  their  wares. 

Of  the  other  two  highways  out  of  Port  au  Prince  one  climbs  into  the 
hills  to  Petionville,  from  which  a  trail  leads  to  cool  and  refreshing 
Furcy,  among  its  pine-trees,  four  thousand  feet  above  the  sea.  A 
longer  road  is  that  to  the  southern  peninsula.  Leaving  the  capital  at 
the  opposite  end  of  the  main  street  from  that  to  the  Cul-de-Sac,  it 
passes  the  "  navy  yard  "  and  skirts  the  bay  for  miles  beyond.  It,  too, 
is  apt  to  be  crowded  with  market-women,  and  with  donkeys,  women, 
and  men  carrying  rock  salt  from  Leogane.  Half-way  to  that  town 
there  is  a  clearing  in  the  dense  woods  famed  as  the  scene  of  frequent 
voodoo  rites,  and  for  a  long  space  the  road  is  bordered  by  the  scraggly 
tree-bushes  of  an  abandoned  castor-bean  plantation  from  which  our 
Government  once  hoped  to  produce  oil  for  its  airplanes.  Leogane  is  a 
town  of  considerable  size,  the  usual  grass-grown  square  of  which  is 
faced  by  a  quaint  old  church  of  what  might  almost  be  called  Haitian 
architecture.  Churches  were  the  only  buildings  spared  by  the  infuri- 
ated slaves  in  their  revolt  against  the  French,  as  the  priests  were  the 
only  white  people  who  escaped  attack,  but  neglect  and  the  tropical  cli- 
mate have  in  most  cases  completed  the  work  of  destruction.  The  town 
and  the  region  about  it  is  one  of  the  few  places  in  Haiti  where  the 
malarial  mosquito  abounds.  Here,  too,  are  to  be  found  many  bush- 
grown  ruins  of  French  plantations.  Far  to  the  westward  along  the 
tongue  of  land  forming  the  southern  horn  of  Haiti,  and  to  be  reached 
only  by  horse  or  boat,  is  the  town  of  Jeremie,  near  which  the  elder 
Dumas  was  born,  the  son  of  a  French  general  and  a  negro  slave. 

The  gendarme  officer  with  whom  I  was  traveling  on  this  occasion, 
however,  had  come  to  inspect  Jacmel,  on  the  southern  coast.  At  two 
and  a  half  hours  by  Ford  from  the  capital,  the  last  part  of  it  by  a 
narrow  dirt  roadway  winding  through  high  hills,  we  changed  to  moth- 
eaten  native  horses  and  rode  away  down  the  River  Gauche,  which  we 
forded  one  hundred  and  eighteen  times  during  the  next  four  hours. 
The  black  soil  was  fertile,  and  cultivated  in  scattered  patches  even  to 
the  tops  of  the  hills.  Coffee  in  uncared-for  luxuriance  often  bordering 


158          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

the  way  showed  what  this  region  had  been  under  the  French.  It  was 
still  well  populated,  for  the  people  of  the  southern  peninsula  have 
never  revolted,  and  cacos  are  unknown,  though  there  is  much  petty 
thieving.  At  every  turn  of  the  trail  startled,  respectful  negroes  raised 
their  hats  as  we  passed,  only  a  few  of  them  having  the  half-sullen  air 
of  their  fellow-countrymen  elsewhere  at  sight  of  Americans.  Their 
little  huts  of  thatch,  or  tache,  as  yagua  is  called  in  Haiti,  were  every- 
where tucked  away  in  the  bush,  cattle  and  pigs  were  numerous,  though 
all  animals  except  the  goats  had  a  half-starved  appearance.  Bananas 
and  oranges  grew  in  profusion ;  the  trail  was  strewn  with  the  peelings  of 
the  native  pear-shaped  grape-fruit.  Frequent  patches  of  Kafir-corn, 
called  pitinii,  the  "  Creole  "  abbreviation  of  petit  mdis,  waved  their  lofty 
heads  of  rice-like  grain  in  the  breeze.  Immovable  donkeys  now  and 
then  blocked  the  trail,  indifferent  alike  to  the  shrieks  of  their  drivers 
and  to  the  commanding  voice  of  the  native  gendarme  who  accompanied 
us.  Here  and  there  washing  parties  of  women  were  beating  their  rags 
on  stones  at  the  edge  of  the  stream  and  spreading  them  out  in  the  sun 
to  bleach,  their  almost  nude  black  bodies  glistening  in  the  sunshine  and 
their  tongues  cackling  incessantly  until  a  glimpse  of  us  reduced  them  to 
sudden  silence.  Several  times  we  passed  voodoo  signs  —  a  chicken 
with  its  entrails  removed  hanging  by  one  leg  from  a  pole,  the  white 
skull  of  a  horse  decorated  with  bits  of  red  rag  set  on  the  top  of  a 
cactus-bush.  Now  and  then  we  came  across  the  most  primitive  form 
of  cane-crusher  except  the  human  teeth.  It  consisted  of  a  grooved 
stick  driven  through  a  tree  or  post,  with  a  bit  of  sapling  fastened  at  one 
end.  While  one  negro  held  a  sugar-cane,  another  rolled  the  sapling 
back  and  forth  along  it,  the  juice  running  down  the  groove  into  a  gourd 
or  pot.  Wherever  the  breeze  reached  us  the  weather  was  agreeable; 
in  the  breathless  pockets  of  the  hills  the  humid  heat  hung  about  us  like  a 
hot  wet  blanket. 

The  marine-gendarme  commander  of  Jacmel  met  us  with  an  auto- 
mobile farther  out  along  the  trail  than  one  had  ever  been  driven  before, 
and  the  astounded  natives  fled  shrieking  before  it  as  if  the  malignant 
spirits  they  fancied  they  could  hear  groaning  under  its  hood  were  visibly 
pursuing  them.  In  the  town  itself  the  people  greeted  their  benevolent 
despot  with  just  such  antics  as  one  might  fancy  their  forefathers  per- 
formed before  their  African  chiefs.  Jacmel,  however,  has  a  number 
of  "  citizens  of  color  "  of  education  and  moderate  wealth.  The  hills 
about  it  grow  two  crops  of  coffee  a  year,  cotton  and  cacao  alternate  all 
the  year  round,  veritable  forests  of  cotton-trees  cover  the  sites  of  old 


IN  THE  HAITIAN  BUSH  159 

French  plantations,  and  there  is  considerable  shipping,  though  the  bay 
is  deep  and  dangerous.  But  its  prosperity  is  mainly  due,  of  course,  to 
its  lifelong  freedom  from  cacos  and  revolutions.  It  is  a  hilly  town  of 
six  thousand  inhabitants,  with  sharp  lines  of  caste,  more  stone  build- 
ings than  are  usual  in  Haiti,  a  Protestant  as  well  as  a  Catholic  church, 
an  imposing  hotel  de  ville,  with  the  familiar  misstatement  "  Liberte, 
Egalite,  Fraternite  "  on  its  facade,  "  summer  "  homes  in  its  suburbs, 
and  a  tile-roofed  market.  Strangers  but  seldom  disrupt  the  languid 
tenor  of  its  ways,  however,  and  not  only  is  there  no  hotel,  but  not  even 
a  place  to  get  a  cup  of  coffee  and  a  sandwich,  unless  one  accept  the 
hospitality  of  marines  or  gendarme  officers.  Some  years  ago  a  foreign 
company  erected  an  electric  light  plant,  fitted  up  all  Jacmel  with  elab- 
orate poles  or  underground  wires,  operated  for  one  night,  collected  their 
government  subsidy  and  as  much  as  possible  from  the  citizens,  and  fled. 
To  this  day  the  town  continues  to  worry  along  with  such  lights  as  might 
be  found  in  an  African  village.  In  1896  it  was  completely  wiped  out 
by  fire,  the  land  and  sea  breeze  joining  to  pile  the  flames  so  high  that 
the  population  was  forced  to  flee  to  the  hills,  leaving  all  their  posses- 
sions behind. 

On  our  return  to  Port  au  Prince  the  road,  particularly  from  Leogane 
in,  was  even  more  densely  thronged  than  usual ;  for  it  was  the  last  day 
of  the  year,  and  New  Year's  is  not  only  Haiti's  day  of  independence, 
but  the  one  on  which  presents  are  given,  after  the  French  custom. 
Women  carrying  on  their  heads  heaps  of  native  baskets  higher  than 
themselves,  others  with  as  disproportionate  loads  of  gourds,  donkeys 
laden  to  the  point  of. concealment  with  anything  there  was  any  hope  of 
selling  for  gifts  at  that  evening's  big  market,  filled  the  tumultuous  wake 
behind  us.  I  called  that  afternoon  on  the  mulatto  President  of  Haiti 
in  the  unfinished  palace,  and  caught  him  and  the  minister  of  finance 
in  the  act  of  shaking  and  rearranging  the  rugs  in  preparation  for  the 
coming  festivities.  No  doubt  a  president  whose  duties  are  assumed  by 
men  from  the  outside  world  must  find  something  to  do  to  pass  the 
time.  Next  day,  however,  there  was  no  such  informality  in  his  manner 
as  he  was  driven  in  silk-hat  solemnity  to  a  Te  Deum  in  the  cathedral. 
Four  prancing  horses  drew  the  presidential  carriage,  preceded  and  fol- 
lowed by  a  company  of  native  horsemen  in  more  than  resplendent  uni- 
forms and  drawn  sabers.  At  the  door  he  was  met  by  the  archbishop 
and  all  the  higher  officers  of  our  forces  of  occupation,  who  fell  in 
behind  the  august  ruler  as  he  marched  down  the  central  aisle,  flanked 
at  close  intervals  by  negro  firemen  in  brilliant  red  shirts  of  heavy 


1 6o          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

flannel  and  shining  metal  helmets.  In  their  wake  came  all  the  elite  of 
Port  au  Prince,  some  in  silk  hats  and  full  dress.,  nearly  all  in  brand- 
new  garb,  for  New  Year's  takes  the  place  of  Easter  in  this  respect  in 
Haiti,  and  so  generously  perfumed  that  the  clouds  of  incense  arising 
about  the  altar  made  no  impression  upon  the  nostrils.  Outside,  the 
great  open  square  and  the  adjacent  streets  were  compact  seas  of  up- 
turned black  faces.  The  booming  of  cannon  frequently  punctuated  the 
ceremony,  though  the  beating  of  tomtoms  would  have  been  more  in 
keeping,  and  the  cost  of  the  powder  might  then  have  been  spent  in 
running  the  trade  school  which  had  just  been  abandoned  for  lack  of 
funds.  Faces  running  all  the  gamut  from  white  to  black  were  to  be 
seen  in  the  glaringly  yellow  interior,  but  none  of  the  former  were 
Haitian,  and  the  latter  were  in  the  decided  majority.  The  clergy  were 
white,  the  acolytes  black;  the  formality  and  solemnity  which  reigned 
could  scarcely  have  been  equaled  in  the  elaborate  functions  in  Notre 
Dame  of  Paris. 

A  Cuban  bon  mot  has  it  that  "  The  Haitian  is  the  animal  which  most 
nearly  resembles  man."  Without  subscribing  to  so  broad  a  statement, 
it  must  be  admitted  that  they  are  close  to  the  primitive  savage  despite  a 
veneer  of  civilization  which  all  but  hides  the  African  in  the  upper 
class  and  is  so  thin  upon  the  masses  as  to  be  transparent.  Tradition 
has  it  that  when  the  uprising  against  the  French  was  planned  the  con- 
spirators gave  every  slave  some  grains  of  corn,  -telling  him  to  throw  one 
away  every  day  and  attack  when  none  remained,  for  in  no  other  way 
could  they  have  known  the  date.  To  this  day  the  intelligence  of  the 
masses  is  of  that  caliber.  Readily  capable  of  imitation,  they  initiate 
nothing,  not  even  the  next  obvious  move  in  the  simplest  undertakings. 
They  have  not  a  trace  of  gratitude  in  their  make-up,  no  sexual  morality, 
unbounded  superstition,  and  no  family  love.  Mothers  gladly  give  away 
their  children ;  if  they  ever  see  them  again  there  is  no  evidence  of  glad- 
ness shown  on  either  side.  They  have  a  certain  naive  simplicity  and 
some  of  the  unintentional  honesty  that  goes  with  it ;  they  have  of 
course  their  racial  cheerfulness,  though  even  that  is  less  in  evidence 
than  among  most  of  their  race.  A  French  woman  who  has  spent  nearly 
all  her  life  in  Haiti  long  tried  to  discover  some  symptoms  of  poetical 
fancy  or  love  for  the  beautiful  among  the  full  blacks.  One  day  she 
found  a  servant  sitting  in  the  back  yard  looking  up  into  the  tree-tops. 
Asked  what  he  was  thinking  about,  he  answered,  "  I  am  not  thinking  ; 
I  am  listening  to  the  breeze  in  the  cocoanut-palms."  That  is  the  sum 


IN  THE  HAITIAN  BUSH  161 

total  of  sentiment  during  long  years  of  observation.  Family  relations 
are  little  short  of  promiscuous.  Girls  who  have  reached  the  age  of 
ten  are  made  to  understand  that  they  must  be  on  the  lookout  for  lovers ; 
mothers  refuse  to  support  them  after  they  have  grown  old  enough  to 
live  with  a  man.  An  old  maid  is  considered  a  freak  of  nature  in  Haiti, 
and  such  freaks  are  exceedingly  rare  in  the  Black  Republic. 

More  temperamental  than  our  own  negroes,  the  Haitians  are  in- 
credibly childlike  in  their  mental  processes.  A  certain  gendarme  officer 
whose  butler  was  frequently  remiss  in  his  duties  had  him  enrolled  in 
the  native  corps  in  order  to  bring  military  discipline  to  bear  upon  him. 
A  few  days  later  the  servant  requested  that  he  be  given  the  right  to 
carry  arms,  like  other  gendarmes.  The  officer  good  naturedly  gave  him 
a  harmless  old  revolver  that  had  been  captured  from  the  cacos.  A  few 
days  later  reports  began  to  leak  into  headquarters  that  the  national  force 
was  terrorizing  the  inhabitants  of  a  certain  section  of  Port  au  Prince. 
The  detectives  got  busy,  and  found  that  the  gendarme-butler,  his  day's 
service  over,  was  in  the  habit  of  patrolling  that  part  of  town  in  which 
he  was  born  and  where  he  was  well  known,  strutting  back  and  forth 
among  his  awed  fellow-citizens  during  the  evening,  and  from  midnight 
on  beating  on  house  doors  and  commanding  the  inmates,  "  in  the  name 
of  the  law,"  and  at  the  point  of  his  revolver,  to  come  outside  and  line  up 
*'  for  inspection."  He  had  no  designs  upon  their  possessions,  but  was 
simply  indulging  his  love  for  display  and  authority.  When  his  em- 
ployer took  his  putative  weapon  away  from  him  again,  he  wept  like  a 
child  of  six.  His  grief,  however,  was  short  lived,  for  when  the  Presi- 
dent called  at  the  home  of  the  officer  on  New  Year's  afternoon,  he 
found  the  butler  so  dressed  up  that  he  inadvertently  shook  hands  with 
him  as  one  of  the  guests. 

Abuse  of  authority  is  a  fixed  fault  in  the  Haitian  character,  as  with 
most  negroes.  Of  the  several  reasons  why  there  are  only  two  or  three 
native  lieutenants  in  the  gendarmerie,  lack  of  intelligence  and  dishonesty 
are  less  conspicuous  than  the  inability  to  wield  authority  lightly.  The 
Haitians  of  the  masses  have  only  three  forms  of  recreation,  dances, 
cock-fights,  and  voodooism.  They  have  not  even  risen  to  the  level  of 
the  "  movies,"  for  though  there  are  two  cinemas  in  the  capital  and  one 
in  Cap  Ha'itien,  these  are  too  "  high  brow  "  for  any  but  the  upper  class. 
Of  pretty  native  customs  we  found  only  one  —  that  of  hanging  up  little 
colored-paper  churches  with  candles  inside  them  at  Christmas-time. 
The  Haitians  are  inveterate  gamblers,  which  is  only  another  way  of 
saying  that  they  abhor  work.  As  the  negro  admires  the  successful  anc 


162  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

dominant,  so  he  has  supreme  contempt  for  the  broken  and  discredited. 
The  Germans  who  once  ruled  the  commercial  roost  in  Haiti  and  who 
were  interned  after  our  entry  into  the  war  would  find  no  advantage  in 
returning,  even  if  they  were  permitted  to,  for  they  have  lost  for  life 
the  respect  of  the  natives  by  allowing  themselves  to  be  arrested.  The 
profiteering  Syrians  who  have  largely  inherited  their  control  of  com- 
merce have  far  more  standing  to-day  despite  their  slippery  methods. 

Between  the  primitive  bulk  of  the  population  and  the  slight  minority 
of  educated  citizens,  mainly  "  people  of  color,"  there  is  a  wide  gulf. 
Haiti  has  no  middle  class,  not  even  a  skilled  labor  class.  Those  who 
have  ambition  or  wealth  enough  to  go  in  for  "  higher  education  "  will 
have  nothing  to  do  with  anything  even  suggestive  of  manual  labor. 
The  ability  to  read,  write,  and  speak  French  automatically  brings  with 
it  a  contempt  for  work  and  workers.  As  in  all  Latin  America,  an  agri- 
cultural school  is  worse  than  useless,  because  it  serves  only  to  spoil 
what  might  have  been  good  foremen,  and  the  mere  possession  of  a 
scrap  of  paper  announcing  the  holder  a  graduate  of  such  an  institution 
is  prima-facie  evidence  that  he  intends  to  loaf  in  the  shade  all  the  rest 
of  his  days.  The  result  is  that  the  population  is  made  up  of  poverty- 
stricken,  incredibly  ignorant  laborers  and  peasants,  and  of  lawyers, 
"  doctors "  of  this  and  that,  and  the  political-military  class  which 
tyrannizes  and  fattens  on  the  African  masses. 

Superficially,  the  educated  class  of  Haiti  is  pleasant  to  meet,  though 
the  first  impression  seldom  lasts.  It  has  all  the  outward  manners  of 
the  French,  with  none  of  their  solid  basis.  In  discussions  of  literature 
and  art  these  "  gens  de  couleur  "  could  give  the  average  American  busi- 
ness man  cards  and  spades;  in  actually  doing  or  producing  something 
worth  while  they  are  completely  out  of  their  depth.  Once  in  a  blue 
moon  one  runs  across  a  full-blooded  negro  who  shows  outcroppings  of 
genius.  We  were  invited  to  meet  such  a  one  at  the  home  of  a  "  high 
yellow  "  senator  on  New  Year's  eve,  a  pianist  who  had  studied  in  Paris. 
I  had  been  told  that  there  were  several  fine  musicians  in  Haiti,  but,  in 
the  light  of  other  experiences,  had  inwardly  scoffed  at  the  idea.  It  re- 
quired but  very  little  time  to  be  convinced  that  here  at  least  was  one. 
The  man  not  only  played  the  best  classics  in  a  manner  that  would  have 
been  applauded  in  the  highest  class  of  concert  halls,  but  gave  several 
pieces  of  his  own  composition  which  could  hold  their  place  in  any  pro- 
gram. He  had  played  a  few  times  in  the  United  States,  but  the  draw- 
back of  color  had  proved  insurmountable,  and  as  there  is  naturally  no 
income  to  be  derived  from  such  a  source  in  Haiti,  Ludovic  Lamothe 


IN  THE  HAITIAN  BUSH  163 

now  holds  a  minor  clerkship  in  the  ministry  of  agriculture !  When  he 
had  finished,  the  senator  himself  sat  down  at  the  piano  and  gave  an 
exhibition  which,  I  have  no  hesitancy  in  asserting,  could  scarcely  have 
been  duplicated  by  any  member  of  our  own  upper  house,  and  one  which 
reminded  us  by  contrast  of  the  uproarious  rag-time  that  was  even  at 
that  moment  reigning  along  Broadway.  Yet  it  was  such  men  as  these 
that  our  marines  once  evicted  from  the  Haitian  senate  with,  "  Come  on, 
you  niggers,  get  out  of  here !  "  Even  the  Southerner  who  had  been 
induced  to  come  with  us,  and  whose  muscles  seemed  to  tense  with  in- 
ward horror  as  our  host  greeted  him  with  a  handshake  and  introduced 
him  to  the  pianist,  gradually  shrank  down  into  his  chair  in  unconscious 
acknowledgment  of  his  own  ignorance  of  the  higher  things  of  life  as 
compared  with  these  cultured  "  niggers." 

We  met  a  few  other  men  of  this  type  at  the  yearly  "  Haitian  ball  "  in 
the  chief  native  club,  which  American  civilians  attend,  to  the  unbounded 
disgust  of  the  forces  of  occupation.  Yet  the  primitive  African  now 
and  then  showed  itself  in  the  whitest  of  them.  Those  who  know  them 
well  say  that  even  Haiti's  elite,  educated  in  Europe  or  the  United 
States,  are  apt  to  forget  their  Christian  faith  when  troubles  assail  them 
and  go  to  a  "  Papa  Loi "  for  a  -wanga,  or  charm,  and  pay  for  a  voodoo 
ceremony.  In  Paris  lives  a  certain  Mme.  Thebes,  in  high  repute  among 
those  who  believe  in  sorcery  and  prophecy.  If  the  stories  which  grad- 
ually leak  out  from  the  confidences  of  returning  natives  to  their  friends 
are  trustworthy,  she  tells  all  Haitians  that  they  are  some  day  to  become 
president  of  their  country,  not  a  bad  guess  under  old  conditions,  though 
the  supernatural  madame  does  not  seem  to  have  kept  up  with  the  times. 
More  than  one  revolution  has  been  started  on  the  strength  of  her 
prophecies.  Some  of  these  upper-class  "  people  of  color "  are  de- 
scendants of  the  same  families  who  fled  to  Philadelphia  and  New  Or- 
leans at  the  time  of  the  slave  revolt.  The  members  who  remained 
behind  were  or  have  since  become  intermixed  with  the  blacks.  At  least 
one  American  connected  with  the  forces  of  occupation  was  introduced 
at  a  presidential  reception  to  a  colored  family  of  the  same  name,  which 
turned  out  to  be  relatives.  As  the  American  chanced  to  be  a  South- 
erner, it  is  easy  to  imagine  whether  the  discovery  brought  joy  and 
mutual  social  calls. 

Stories  of  human  sacrifices,  cannibalism,  and  occult  poisonings  are 
always  going  the  rounds  in  Haiti,  though  it  is  difficult  to  find  any  one 
of  unquestioned  integrity  who  has  actually  seen  such  things  himself.  I 
met  two  gendarme  officers  who  asserted  they  had  found  the  feet  of  a 


164          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

black  baby  sticking  out  of  a  boiling  pot,  and  there  are  numbers  of  well- 
balanced  Americans  in  Haiti  who  are  firmly  convinced  that  all  three  of 
the  crimes  above  mentioned  are  practised.  Certainly  many  of  the  na- 
tives look  hungry  enough  to  eat  their  own  children.  The  body  of  a 
marine  was  once  found  in  a  condition  to  bear  out  the  charge  of  canni- 
balism, but  it  has  never  been  proved  that  this  was  not  the  work  of 
hogs  or  dogs.  Most  frequent  of  all,  say  the  believers,  are  the  cases  of 
blood-sucking,  the  victims  being  preferably  virgins.  Not  long  before 
our  occupation  a  baby  in  the  best  district  of  Port  au  Prince  died  for  loss 
of  blood,  which  an  old  neighbor  later  confessed  to  having  inflicted  while 
the  mother  was  out  of  the  room.  The  daughter  of  a  former  minister  is 
said  to  have  been  similarly  treated  by  her  grandmother  and  a  prominent 
man.  The  rite  over,  they  pronounced  her  dead,  and  she  was  buried 
with  much  pomp,  the  grandmother,  according  to  the  story,  replacing 
with  coffee  the  embalming  fluid  that  was  poured  down  her  throat.  Five 
years  later  a  rumor  of  her  existence  having  reached  a  priest  through 
the  confessional,  what  is  believed  to  be  the  same  girl  was  discovered  in 
a  hill  town.  She  was  wild,  unkempt,  demented,  and  had  borne  three 
children.  The  coffin  was  dug  up,  and  in  it  was  found  her  wedding 
dress, —  for  though  she  was  only  eight  or  nine  at  the  time,  it  is  the 
custom  in  Haiti  to  bury  young  girls  in  such  garments, —  but  the  autopsy 
proved  the  remains  to  be  those  of  a  man,  the  legs  cut  off  and  laid  along- 
side the  body.  That  there  are  Haitian  Obeah  practitioners  who  have  so 
remarkable  a  knowledge  of  vegetable  poisons  that  they  can  destroy 
their  enemies  or  those  of  their  clients  without  being  detected  seems  to  be 
generally  admitted.  Some  of  these  poisons  are  said  to  be  so  subtle 
that  the  victims  live  for  years,  dying  slowly  as  from  some  wasting  dis- 
ease, or  going  insane,  deaf,  blind,  or  dumb,  with  the  civilized  medical 
profession  helpless  to  relieve  them.  Men  of  undoubted  judgment  and 
integrity,  some  of  them  Americans,  claim  to  have  positive  proof  of  such 
cases. 

The  less  gruesome  forms  of  Obeah  and  voodooism  are  known  to  be 
practised  in  Haiti.  The  former  is  a  species  of  witchcraft  by  men  and 
women  who  are  supposed  to  possess  supernatural  powers,  and  who  cer- 
tainly have  far  greater  sway  over  the  masses  of  the  people  than  priests 
or  presidents.  For  a  small  sum  they  will  undertake  to  help  in  business 
matters,  to  create  love  in  unresponsive  breasts,  possibly  to  put  an  enemy 
out  of  the  way,  and  some  of  the  "  stunts  "  they  perform  are  beyond 
comprehension.  Voodooism,  unlike  the  other,  is  a  form  of  religion,  the 
deity  being  an  imaginary  "  great  green  serpent,"  with  a  high  priest 


IN  THE  HAITIAN  BUSH  165 

known  as  "  Papa  Loi "  and  a  priestess  called  *'  Maman  Loi."  Chicken 
snakes  and  a  harmless  python  are  kept  as  sacred  beings  in  Haiti,  and 
fed  by  the  faithful.  In  theory  the  serpent  deity  demands  sacrifices  of 
a  "  goat  without  horns  " ;  in  other  words,  a  child,  preferably  white. 
But  there  is  no  positive  evidence  to  prove  that  anything  more  than 
goats,  sheep,  or  roosters  are  actually  sacrificed.  These  simpler  rites 
are  carried  on  almost  openly,  and  are  accompanied  by  all  sorts  of 
childish  incantations,  with  such  nonsensical  fetishes  as  red  rags,  dried 
snakes  and  lizards,  human  bones,  or  portions  of  human  organs,  stolen 
perhaps  from  graveyards.  The  most  frequent  form  of  revenge  among 
the  Haitian  masses  is  the  burying  of  a  bottle  filled  with  "  charms  "  of 
this  nature,  over  which  are  recited  various  incantations  at  certain 
phases  of  the  moon,  in  the  hope  of  bringing  destruction  or  lesser  pun- 
ishment on  the  object  of  the  enmity.  So  firm  is  the  belief  of  the  ne- 
groes in  the  power  of  Obeah  that  they  sometimes  succumb  to  fear  and 
die  merely  because  some  one  has  cast  such  a  spell  upon  them.  A  French 
priest  who  was  traveling  through  the  country  called  at  a  cabin  one 
night  to  ask  the  occupant  to  show  him  the  way.  The  man  refused, 
whereupon  the  priest,  being  denied  the  customary  form  of  expressing 
displeasure,  began  to  recite  a  quotation  from  Ovid.  To  his  surprise 
the  native  dashed  out  of  his  hut,  fell  at  his  feet,  and  offered  to  do  any- 
thing he  demanded,  if  only  he  would  not  "  put  Obeah  "  on  him.  Perhaps 
the  most  serious  result  of  these  practices  is  the  appalling  number  of 
children  who  die  under  the  ministrations  of  voodoo  "  doctors." 

A  group  of  Americans  once  offered  to  pay  for  a  voodoo  supper  if 
they  were  allowed  to  attend  it.  White  men  are  seldom  admitted  to  the 
native  ceremonies ;  some  have  suffered  for  their  intrusion.  In  this  case 
there  was  the  added  fear  that  the  officials  who  saw  the  rites  would 
forbid  them  thereafter ;  but  a  Frenchman  finally  persuaded  the  natives 
that  it  would  be  to  their  advantage  to  let  the  Americans  see  one  of  their 
festivities  in  order  to  prove  that  they  were  harmless.  How  much  was 
left  out  because  of  the  guests  there  is  of  course  no  means  of  knowing. 

About  seventy  dollars  was  spent  for  corn-meal,  tafia  (crude  native 
rum),  sacrifices,  and  other  things  required,  and  to  pay  the  chief  per- 
formers their  fees.  The  temple  was  decorated  with  flags  and  various 
fetishes.  The  ceremony  began  with  a  tom-tom  dance  by  the  priests, 
who  were  soon  joined  by  the  high  priestess,  wearing  a  white  skirt,  a 
red  waist,  and  a  brilliant  bandana,  and  waving  spangled  flags.  Then 
a  goat,  scrubbed  to  spotless  white,  its  horns  gilded,  and  a  red  bow  on 
Us  head,  was  brought  in.  The  priestess  danced  about  it  with  a  snaky 


166          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

motion,  holding  her  shoulders  stiffly  and  giving  her  waist  the  maximum 
of  movement.  Then  she  got  astride  the  goat  and  rode  round  and 
round,  clinging  to  its  horns.  Every  few  minutes  the  priests  gave  her 
tafia  until  she  had  worked  herself  into  a  real  or  feigned  paroxysm  of 
excitement.  To  say  that  she  was  intoxicated  would  perhaps  be  putting 
it  too  strongly,  for  the  average  Haitian  is  so  soaked  in  rum  from  birth 
that  it  has  little  visible  effect  upon  him. 

At  length  a  priest  caught  up  a  handful  of  corn-meal  and,  with  what 
appeared  to  be  two  careless  gestures,  formed  a  perfect  cross  with  it  on 
the  ground.  Candles  were  placed  at  the  ends  of  the  cross,  then  tafia 
and  other  liquors  were  poured  along  the  lines  of  corn-meal,  the  priestess 
meanwhile  continuing  to  ride  the  goat  with  hideous  contortions.  Fi- 
nally she  dismounted,  slipped  off  the  white  skirt,  leaving  her  entirely 
clothed  in  red,  and  while  a  priest  held  the  goat  by  the  front  feet  she 
pierced  a  vein  in  its  neck  and  drank  all  the  blood  she  could  contain. 
For  a  time  she  seemed  to  be  in  a  stupor ;  then  she  began  to  "  prophesy  " 
in  loathsome,  incomprehensible  noises,  which  a  priest  "  translated," 
probably  in  terms  of  his  own  choosing.  While  this  pair  howled,  the 
goat  was  prepared  and  put  in  caldrons  to  cook,  with  rice,  beans,  tafia, 
salt,  pepper,  and  lard.  Old  women  stirred  the  contents  of  these  with 
their  bare  hands,  which  had  been  bleached  almost  white  by  frequent 
immersions  in  similar  boiling  messes.  When  the  food  was  cooked,  the 
priestess  came  suddenly  out  of  her  trance  and  fell  to  with  all  the  ne- 
groes present,  who  were  still  sitting  about  in  a  circle  eating  sacred  goat 
meat  and  drinking  tafia  when  the  white  spectators  finally  left. 

*'  The  only  thing  wrong  with  the  Haitians  is  lack  of  education,"  says 
a  recent  investigator,  which  can  scarcely  be  doubted,  since  it  is  true 
of  all  mankind.  By  some  oversight,  perhaps,  no  mention  of  schools  and 
courts  was  made  in  the  treaty  under  which  we  are  administering  the 
country.  The  French  maintained  no  schools  for  the  negroes,  and  it 
goes  without  saying  that  conditions  scarcely  improved  during  the  cen- 
tury and  a  quarter  of  independence.  An  American  superintendent, 
who  is  quite  properly  a  Catholic  and  of  Louisiana  Creole  stock,  has  been 
appointed,  and  is  in  theory  directly  responsible  to  the  native  minister 
of  public  instruction.  But  the  higher  American  civilian  officials,  cling- 
ing perhaps  too  closely  to  the  letter  of  the  treaty,  have  not  seen  fit  to 
assign  any  great  amount  of  the  public  revenues  of  Haiti  to  this  pur- 
pose. There  are  thirteen  hundred  teachers  in  the  country,  probably 
the  majority  of  whom  are  in  no  way  qualified  for  their  task,  and  of 
the  fifty  thousand  pupils  enrolled  barely  one  in  three  is  in  regular  at' 


IN  THE  HAITIAN  BUSH  167 

tendance.  In  other  words,  not  ten  per  cent,  of  the  children  of  school 
age  get  even  primary  instruction,  and  less  than  one  per  cent,  ever  reach 
the  secondary  schools.  The  law  school  in  Port-au-Prince,  with  thirty 
students,  is  reported  to  be  efficient ;  the  medical  school  is  frankly  a  farce. 
Teaching  methods  are  in  all  but  a  few  cases  primitive,  consisting  of  little 
more  than  monologues  by  the  "  teacher,"  to  which  the  pupils  listen  only 
when  nothing  else  occupies  their  attention.  A  thorough  reform  in  this 
matter  is  essential  to  the  task  we  have  undertaken  in  Haiti,  unless  we 
subscribe  as  a  nation  to  the  old  Southern  attitude  that  the  negro  is 
better  off  without  education.  The  present  generation  is  hopeless  in 
this  as  in  many  other  regards ;  it  remains  to  be  seen  whether  we  will  and 
can  lift  the  next  out  of  the  primitive  savagery  which  at  present  reigns. 
The  popular  language  of  Haiti  bears  no  very  close  resemblance  to  the 
tongue  from  which  it  is  largely  descended.  The  slaves  came  from 
different  parts  of  Africa,  in  some  cases  belonging  to  enemy  tribes,  and 
"  creole  "  is  the  natural  evolution  of  their  desire  to  talk  with  one  an- 
other. The  resultant  dialect  has  French  as  a  basis,  but  it  is  so  ab- 
breviated, condensed,  and  simplified,  and  includes  so  many  African 
words,  that  it  has  become  almost  a  new  language.  It  is  quite  distinct 
from  the  patois  of  Canada  and  even  of  the  French  West  Indies,  though 
there  are  points  of  resemblance.  It  has  not  even  the  inflection  of  real 
French,  and  only  now  and  then  does  one  knowing  that  language  catch 
an  intelligible  word.  Haitian  voices  have  a  softness  equal  to  those  of 
our  Southern  darkies,  and  are  in  marked  contrast  to  the  rasping  tones 
of  Cuba.  It  is  a  local  form  of  politeness  to  use  a  squeaky  falsetto  in 
greetings,  and  women  of  the  masses  curtsy  to  one  another  when  they 
shake  hands,  probably  a  survival  from  slave  days  originally  adopted  as 
a  sign  of  their  equality  to  their  expelled  mistresses.  Gender,  number, 
case,  modes,  tenses,  and  articles  have  almost  completely  disappeared. 
As  a  rule,  only  the  feminine  form  of  adjectives  has  survived.  Plurality 
is  indicated,  when  it  is  necessary,  by  a  participle.  Many  words  have 
been  abbreviated  almost  out  of  recognition.  Plalt-ilf  has  become 
"  Aiti  ?  "  The  Dominicans  over  the  border  are  called  "  Pagno."  The 
word  bagaille,  probably  a  corruption  of  bagage,  means  almost  anything ; 
servants  told  to  "  pick  up  "  that  bagaille  grasp  whatever  is  nearest  at 
hand;  bon  bagaille  and  pas  bon  bagaille  are  the  usual  forms  of  good 
and  bad.  "Who"  has  grown  to  be  "  Qui  monde  c,a?"  Many  words 
have  changed  their  meanings  entirely;  the  urchin  who  approaches  you 
rubbing  his  stomach  and  mumbling  "  grand  gout,"  wishes  to  impress 
upon  you  the  very  probable  fact  that  he  has  "  large  hunger."  On  the 


158  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

whole,  it  is  probably  an  advantage,  in  learning  Haitian  "  Creole,"  not 
to  know  real  French. 

The  automobile  in  which  we  took  our  final  leave  of  Port  au  Prince 
plowed  its  way  for  several  miles  along  the  thronged  highway  across  the 
Cul-de-Sac  plain,  then  turned  west  through  an  endless   semi-desert 
bristling  with  thorny  aroma.     A  dead  negro  lying  a  few  yards  from 
the  road  on  the  bare  ground  awakened  no  surprise  from  our  native 
chauffeur  or  the  gendarme  in  plain  clothes  beside  him.     There  were 
no  vultures  flying  about  the  body.     Those  natural  scavengers  were  once 
introduced  into  Haiti,  but  the  natives  killed  and  ate  them.     Soon  we 
came  out  on  the  edge  of  the  sea,  along  the  foot  of  those  same  cliffs 
we  had  seen  while  rolling  in  the  doldrums  on  the  Haitian  navy  three 
weeks  before.     What  had  then  seemed  a  sheer  mountain  wall  was  in 
reality  a  fiat  narrow  plain  backed  by  sloping  hills.     Naked  black  fisher- 
men were  plying  their  trade  thigh-deep  in  the  blue  water.     Gonave 
island  and  the  southern  peninsula  were  almost  golden  brown  under  the 
early  sun.     For  a  long  time  the  thorny  desert  continued,  for  southern 
Haiti  had  for  months  been  suffering  from  drought.     There  were  several 
ruins  of  ox-and-kettle  sugar-mills,  here  and  there  evidences  of  former 
plantation  houses;   miserable   native   huts   leaning   drunkenly   against 
their  broken  walls.     Once  we  passed  a  massive  old  stone  aqueduct. 
The  parched  and  sun-burned  landscape  was  now  and  then  broken  by 
green  oases  of  villages.     A  little  railroad  followed  us  all  the  way  to 
St.  Marc,  but  there  was  no  sign  of  trains.     The  town  was  carpeted  in 
dust,  a  ruined  stone  church  towered  above  the  low  houses,  a  dust-and- 
stone-paved  central  square  had  a  grandstand  and  a  fountain  screaming 
in  the  national  colors.     Down  on  the  edge  of  the  deep  bay  crooked, 
reddish  logwood  dragged  in  by  donkeys  was  being  weighed  on  large 
crude  wooden  scales.     This  chief  product  of  the  region  to-day  lay  in 
heaps  along  the  dusty  road  beyond.     Cannon  bearing  the  Napoleonic 
device   and   date,   left   by   the   ill-starred   expeditionary    force   under 
Leclerc,  served  as  corner-posts  of  the  bridges.     The  dense  green  of 
mango-trees  contrasted  with  the  dry  mountain-walled  plain  ;  nowhere 
was  there  a  sprig  of  grass,  seldom  a  sign  of  water.     Pitimi  grew  rather 
abundantly,  however,  and  there  was  some  cotton.     About  the  mouth 
of  the  Artibonite,  sometimes  called  the  "  Haitian  Nile,"  was  a  spreading 
delta  of  greenery.     Miserable  thatched  huts  of  mud  plastered  on  reeds 
were  numerous,  yet  blended  so  into  the  dull,  dry  landscape  as  scarcely 
to  draw  the  attention.     Negroes  carrying  huge  loads  of  reed  mats  now 


IN  THE  HAITIAN  BUSH  169 

and  then  jogged  past  in  the  hot  dust;  everywhere  was  what  a  native 
writer  calls  "  1'aridite  desolante  de  la  campagne."  Yet  though  the 
drought  occasionally  flagellates  portions  of  it,  there  is  scarcely  a  spot 
in  Haiti  which  would  not  produce  abundantly  under  anything  like  proper 
cultivation. 

Arid  hills,  with  parched,  purple-brown  scrub  forests,  shut  in  the 
town  of  Dessalines,  with  its  pathetic  little  forts  that  were  long  ago  de- 
signed to  protect  the  general  of  the  same  name.  A  small,  dust-covered, 
baking-hot  town  well  back  from  the  sea  in  a  kind  of  bay  of  the  plain, 
it  was  indeed  a  negro  capital.  Farther  on  the  dust  and  aridity  largely 
disappeared.  There  was  considerable  cotton  showing  signs  of  lan- 
guid cultivation,  some  fields  were  being  hoed,  others  irrigated,  as  we 
snaked  in  and  out  along  the  wrinkled  skirts  of  the  rocky  range  on  the 
right.  Crippled  beggars  lined  the  way  even  here;  in  fact,  there  is  a 
suggestion  of  India  in  the  numbers  of  diseased  mendicants  squatting 
beside  the  dusty,  sunny  roads  of  Haiti.  Women  and  children  were 
bathing  in  brackish  streams.  Then  it  grew  arid  again,  and  we  found 
Gonaives,  more  than  a  hundred  miles  from  the  capital,  in  a  very  dry 
setting  on  the  edge  of  a  smaller  bay.  It  claims  twenty-five  thousand 
inhabitants,  some  of  whom  live  in  moderate  comfort.  As  in  Port  au 
Prince,  one  was  assailed  on  all  sides  by  the  modern  Haitian  motto, 
"  Gimme  fi'  cents,"  which  is  really  not  so  serious  a  demand  as  it  sounds, 
since  it  only  means  five  centimes.  It  was  in  Gonaives  that  independ- 
ence was  declared  in  1804,  and  from  here  Toussaint  1'Ouverture  was 
sent  to  France  in  chains.  The  town  is  engaged  chiefly  in  commerce. 
From  it  we  turned  back  north  by  east  into  the  country.  A  pathetic 
little  railroad  again  began  to  follow  us.  The  first  few  miles  over  a 
range  of  foot-hills  were  burned  as  dry  as  all  the  southern  slope ;  then, 
as  we  climbed  higher,  it  grew  rapidly  greener,  the  dust  disappeared, 
we  forded  several  small  rivers  many  times,  and  were  completely  shut 
in  by  fresh  and  verdant  vegetation  before  we  reached  Ennery. 

This  is  a  stony,  sleepy  little  hamlet  among  the  mountains,  famed  in 
Haitian  history  as  the  place  where  Toussaint  was  living  when  the 
French  general  Brunet  wrote  him,  asking  for  an  interview,  at  which 
he  was  traitorously  arrested  and  sent  to  end  his  days  in  a  French 
dungeon.  There  we  left  the  road  to  Cap  Haitien  and,  still  fording, 
rising  constantly  over  long  humps  of  ground,  always  turning,  grad- 
ually gained  coffee-growing  elevation.  A  fine  new  road,  passing  one 
large  marine  camp,  carried  us  higher  still,  tmtil  green  mountains  stood 
all  about  us,  the  air  grew  pleasant  as  that  of  our  Northern  spring-time, 


>i;o          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

and  at  length  we  found  ourselves  among  pine-trees.  Just  after  sun- 
down, in  the  soft  gray-blue  evening  of  the  temperate  tropics,  we  sighted 
the  little  white  church  of  St.  Michel,  beyond  which  we  spun  across  a 
floor-level  plateau  a  little  farther  to  the  residence  of  an  American  estate 
manager.  To  say  that  we  had  covered  a  hundred  and  fifty  miles  com- 
fortably, with  one  short  and  one  long  stop,  between  daylight  and  dark 
gives  some  idea  of  what  American  occupation  has  done  for  Haitian 
roads. 

The  great  plains,  fourteen  hundred  feet  high,  were  flooded  with 
moonlight  all  through  the  night,  in  which  I  several  times  awoke  shiver- 
ing for  all  my  heavy  blankets.  By  day  the  sea-flat  plateau  proved  to 
be  covered  with  brown  grass  beneath  which  was  the  blackest  of  loamy 
soil.  Gasolene  tractors  were  turning  this  up,  working  by  night  as  well 
as  by  day,  and  operated  by  Haitians  v/ho  had  been  trained  on  the  spot 
under  American  overseers.  It  was  virgin  soil,  for  this  region  was 
Spanish  territory  in  the  time  of  the  French  and  had  been  used  only  as 
grazing  land.  The  new  company  would  soon  have  hundreds  of  acres 
planted  in  cotton,  with  other  crops  to  follow.  Such  enterprises,  multi- 
plied many  fold,  are  among  the  most  immediate  needs  of  Haiti. 

Colonel  W of  the  Marine  Corps  and  Major  General  W , 

Chef  de  la  Gendarmerie  d'Haiti,  who  are  one  and  the  same  person, 
set  out  that  afternoon  on  an  inspection  trip  through  the  heart  of  Haiti, 
and  invited  me  to  go  along.  The  region  being  coco-infested  and  a 
"  restricted  district "  in  which  white  women  were  not  allowed  to  travel, 
Rachel  was  to  continue  by  automobile  on  the  well-guarded  highway  to 
Cap  Haiitien.  The  colonel  and  I  left  the  plantation  by  car  also,  skim- 
ming for  more  than  an  hour  across  the  wonderful  grassy  plain  without 
any  need  of  a  road.  Groups  of  horses  were  grazing  here  and  there, 
but  there  were  no  cattle.  Occasionally  we  met  a  lone  gendarme  plod- 
ding along  in  the  shoes  to  which  he  was  still  far  from  accustomed. 
An  unfinished  road  carried  us  on  from  where  the  plain  began  to  break 
up  into  rolling  country,  with  clusters  of  trees  in  the  hollows.  Now 
and  then  the  colonel  brought  down  one  of  the  deep-blue  wild  pigeons 
which  flew  frequently  past,  but  the  flocks  of  wild  guineas  usually 
found  in  this  region  had  evidently  been  warned  of  his  marksmanship. 
Four-footed  game  does  not  exist  in  Haiti,  and  even  its  harmless  rep- 
tiles are  rare ;  Noah  evidently  did  not  touch  the  West  Indies.  Grad- 
ually the  forest  appeared,  growing  thicker  and  thicker,  until  we  were 
inclosed  in  tunnels  of  vegetation,  fording  many  small  rivers.  Suddenly 
a  great  hubbub  ahead  caused  us  to  make  sure  that  our  rifles  were  in 


IN  THE  HAITIAN  BUSH  171 

readiness,  but  it  was  only  a  cock-fight  in  the  woods,  the  men  standing, 
the  women  seated  on  little  home-made  chairs  outside  the  male  circle 
about  the  ring,  made  of  barrel  staves  driven  upright  into  the  ground. 
In  the  next  mile  we  passed  a  dozen  black  men,  each  with  a  rooster 
under  one  arm,  hurrying  to  the  scene  of  conflict. 

At  the  town  of  Maissade  we  halted  at  a  marine  camp  on  a  hill  over- 
looking the  surrounding  country,  and  commanded  by  Captain  Becker,  a 
famous  hunter  of  cacos.  His  tent  was  almost  filled  with  captured 
war  material :  rifles  of  every  kind  in  use  a  century  ago  corded  like  so 
much  stove-wood;  revolvers  and  pistols  enough  to  stock  a  museum 
devoted  to  the  history  and  development  of  that  arm;  French  swords 
dating  back  to  the  seventeenth  century;  rapiers  such  as  flash  through 
Dumas's  stories ;  heaps  of  rusted  machetes,  battered  bugles,  bamboo 
musical  instruments,  and  hollow-log  tomtoms  from  voodoo  temples; 
drums  abandoned  by  Leclerc ;  ragged  pieces  of  uniform  decorated  with 
ribbons ;  dozens  of  hats  and  caps  of  "  generals,"  of  felt,  cloth,  and 
straw,  all  more  or  less  ragged,  and  all  bearing  such  signs  of  rank  as 
might  be  adopted  by  small  boy  warriors.  Then  there  were  beads  and 
charms,  Obeah  vials  found  on  the  bodies  of  dead  cacos,  mysterious  ar- 
ticles of  unknown  purpose  and  origin.  The  captain  dissected  one  of  the 
charms.  It  consisted  of  a  bullet  wrapped  in  a  dirty  bit  of  paper  on 
which  were  scrawled  a  few  strange  characters,  the  dried  foot  of  a 
lizard,  and  what  was  apparently  a  powdered  insect,  all  inclosed  in  a 
brass  cartridge-shell,  with  a  string  attached  to  it  long  enough  to  go 
around  the  neck  of  the  original  owner,  whom  it  was  supposed  to  pro- 
tect against  bullets.  The  captain  had  shot  him  a  few  days  before,  and 
as  he  fell  he  cried  out  in  "  Creole,"  "  O  Mama,  they  've  got  me !  "  then 
died  cursing  the  Obeah  man  for  making  an  imperfect  charm.  Some  of 
the  cacos  in  the  region  had  recently  surrendered,  and  had  been  made 
"  division  commanders,"  with  the  duty  of  helping  to  hunt  down  their 
former  comrades.  One  of  them  had  showed  the  marine  who  shot  him 
the  bullet  which  he  had  dug  out  of  his  flesh  with  a  machete,  and  now  fol- 
lowed him  everywhere  like  a  faithful  dog. 

In  the  town  itself  the  gendarme  detachment  was  in  command  of 
a  native  lieutenant  who  was  rated  an  excellent  officer,  but  he  had 
barely  a  touch  of  negro  blood.  Beyond  was  a  road  of  boulevard  width 
along  which  we  spun  at  thirty-five  miles  an  hour.  Wild  pigeons,  par- 
rots, and  negroes  far  less  ragged  than  those  of  Port  au  Prince  enlivened 
the  striking  scenery,  and  at  sunset  we  drew  up  before  the  gendarmerie 
of  Hinche,  the  birthplace  of  the  departed  Charlemagne.  There  was 


172          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

something  amusingly  anachronistic  in  the  sight  of  half  a  hundred  ma~ 
rines  playing  baseball  and  basketball  on  the  plain  about  their  camp 
at  the  edge  of  town,  for  Hinche  itself  had  little  in  common  with  such 
scenes. 

All  Haitian  towns  have  a  close  family  resemblance.  There  is  always 
a  big,  brown,  bare,  dusty  central  place,  with  a  tiny  band-stand  with 
steps  painted  in  the  national  colors  and  surmounted  by  a  single  royal 
palm-tree,  called  the  "  patrie."  From  this  radiate  wide,  right-angled 
dirt  streets  lined  by  low  houses,  some  of  plastered  mud,  a  few  white- 
washed, many  of  split  palm  trunks,  most  of  them  of  tache,  nearly  all 
with  earth  floors,  all  except  the  few  covered  with  corrugated  iron  in 
the  center  of  town  being  roofed  with  thatch.  Some  have  narrow 
sapling-pillared  porches  paved  with  little  cobblestones,  these  sometimes 
also  whitewashed ;  and  where  houses  are  missing  are  broken  hedges  of 
organ  cactus  on  which  hang  drying  rags  of  clothing.  Facing  the  place 
is  a  more  or  less  ruined  church,  farther  off  a  large  open  market-place, 
with  perhaps  a  few  ragged  thatch-roof  shelters  from  the  sun.  Then 
there  is  sure  to  be  a  spick-and-span  gendarmerie,  with  large  numbers 
of  docile  prisoners  and  proud  black  gendarmes,  perhaps  a  group  of 
marines,  or  at  any  rate  of  their  native  prototypes,  here  and  there  stalk- 
ing through  the  dusty  streets,  ignoring  the  respectful  greetings  of  the 
teeming  black  populace  squatted  in  their  doorways  or  on  their  dirt 
floors.  Little  fagot  fires  on  the  ground  behind  or  beside  the  huts,  a 
well-worn  path  down  to  the  river,  and  an  indefinable  scent  of  the 
tropics  and  black  humanity  living  in  primitive  conditions  complete  the 
picture.  Men  who  have  seen  both  assert  that  a  Congo  village  is  a 
paradise  compared  with  a  Haitian  hamlet. 

The  curate  came  over  to  smoke  a  cigarette  and  drink  a  sip  of  rum 
with  us  after  supper.  He  was  a  large,  powerful  Frenchman  from 
Brittany,  of  remarkably  fine  features,  sparkling  blue  eyes,  and  no  recent 
hair-cut  or  shave,  dressed  in  an  ecclesiastical  bonnet  and  enormous 
"  congress  "  shoes  run  down  at  heel,  and  the  long  black  gown  which 
seems  so  out  of  place,  yet  is  really  very  convenient,  in  the  tropics.  For 
twelve  years  he  had  shepherded  Hinche  and  the  neighboring  region, 
being  much  of  the  time  the  only  white  man  in  it.  He  expected  to  com- 
plete twenty-five  years'  residence,  then  go  home  in  retirement.  'He 
traveled  freely  everywhere  within  his  district,  caco  sentinels  and  the 
bands  themselves  hiding  when  he  passed  rather  than  molest  him. 
Cannibalism  was  certainly  practised  to  this  day,  in  his  opinion,  espe- 
cially among  the  hills,  where  there  were  many  negroes  older  than  he 


IN  THE  HAITIAN  BUSH  173 

who  had  never  come  to  town.  There  was  less  superstition  in  this  dis- 
trict, he  asserted,  because  the  people  came  somewhat  under  the  more 
civilized  Dominican  influence.  While  we  talked,  two  former  cacos, 
now  "  division  chiefs,"  came  in  to  report  to  the  efficient  young  Ameri- 
can gendarme  commander,  simple  old  souls  with  childlike  eyes  and 
Napoleon  III  beards  whom  one  would  scarcely  have  suspected  of  harm- 
ing a  chicken.  The  day  before  two  native  women  had  brought  in  a  caco 
whom  they  had  cudgeled  into  submission,  and  that  afternoon  an  old 
man,  unarmed,  had  presented  the  commander  with  another,  leading 
him  by  a  rope  around  the  neck. 

In  these  circumstances  we  set  out  on  horseback  next  morning  in  no 
great  fear  of  the  bandits,  though  we  kept  our  rifles  and  revolvers 
handy.  With  us  went  a  curious  dwarf  who  lived  in  the  next  town  and 
who  had  attached  himself  to  the  Americans  like  a  stray  mastiff,  which 
he  closely  resembled  in  expression  and  in  his  devotion  to  them.  He 
was  of  full  size  from  the  waist  upward,  but  his  legs  were  scarcely  a 
foot  long,  and  his  bare  feet  hardly  reached  to  the  edges  of  the  saddle  in 
which  he  sat,  once  he  had  been  placed  there,  with  all  the  assurance  of  a 
cow-boy  of  the  plains.  Then  there  was  "  Jim,"  looking  like  the  advance 
agent  of  a  minstrel  show.  "  Jim  "  was  a  descendant  of  American  ne- 
groes, his  grandparents  having  come  from  Philadelphia  to  Samana, 
Santo  Domingo,  where  a  number  of  black  colonists  from  our  northern 
states  settled  at  the  invitation  of  the  Haitians  when  they  ruled  the 
whole  island.  He  spoke  a  fluent  English,  with  a  mixture  of  Southern 
and  foreign  accent,  as  well  as  "  Creole "  and  Spanish,  and  having 
served  the  colonel  as  interpreter  years  before  during  the  marine  advance 
from  Monte  Cristi  to  Santiago,  had  come  to  Haiti  to  join  him  again 
when  he  took  charge  of  the  gendarmerie.  He  had  been  assigned  to 
plain-clothes  duty,  but  "  Jim's  "  conception  of  that  phrase  did  not  in- 
clude the  adjective,  and  he  had  set  forth  on  what  promised  to  be  any- 
thing but  a  dressy  expedition  in  a  garb  well  suited  for  a  presidential 
reception.  This  was  already  beginning  to  show  the  effects  of  scram- 
bling through  the  underbrush  in  quest  of  the  wild  pigeons  which  had 
fallen  before  the  colonel's  shot-gun. 

The  mayor  of  Hinche,  a  first  cousin  of  Charlemagne,  saw  us  off  in 
person,  holding  the  colonel's  stirrup  and  bidding  him  farewell  with 
bared  head.  We  forded  the  Guayamoc  River  and  wound  away  through 
foot-hills  that  soon  gave  way  to  a  brown,  level  savanna  which  two  years 
before  had  been  covered  with  cattle,  now  wholly  disappeared.  Once  we 
climbed  over  a  large  hill  of  oyster-shells,  which  geologists  would  no 


174          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

doubt  recognise  as  proof  that  the  region  was  formerly  under  the  sea; 
but  the  French  colonists  of  long  ago  were  probably  as  fond  of  oysters 
as  are  their  fellow-countrymen  to-day,  and  it  is  worthy  of  note  that 
these  were  all  half-shells.  We  passed  one  small  village  in  a  hollow, 
with  a  mud  hut  full  of  gendarmes ;  the  rest  of  the  morning  the  dry  and 
arid,  yet  lightly  wooded,  country  was  almost  wholly  uninhabited.  For 
long  spaces  the  scornful  cries  of  black  crows  were  the  only  sounds 
except  the  constant  switching  required  to  keep  our  thin  Haitian  horses 
and  mules  on  the  move. 

Thomasique,  where  we  halted  for  lunch  at  the  mud-hut  gendarmerie, 
was  a  dismal  little  hamlet  of  lopsided  thatched  hovels.  The  commander 
of  the  district  had  found  a  new  use  for  captured  caco  rifles,  using  the 
barrels  as  gratings  for  his  outdoor  cooking-place.  The  juge  de  paix, 
the  magistrate,  and  the  richest  man  of  the  town,  ranging  in  color  from 
quadroon  to  griff e,  called  to  pay  their  respects  to  the  general,  frankly 
admitting  by  their  attitude  that  the  young  American  lieutenant  of  gen- 
darmes was  their  superior  officer.  Under  his  guidance  the  revenues 
of  Thomasique  had  increased  five  fold  in  a  single  month.  It  was  evi- 
dent from  the  manner  of  the  judge  that  he  had  something  on  his  chest, 
and  at  length  he  unburdened  himself.  The  Government,  it  seemed, 
had  not  paid  him  his  salary  —  of  one  dollar  a  month  —  for  more  than 
half  a  year,  and  he  respectfully  petitioned  the  general  to  take  the  matter 
up  with  the  president  upon  his  return  to  Port  au  Prince.  There  was 
probably  a  connection  between  his  lack  of  funds  and  the  auditing  of  the 
village  accounts  by  the  lieutenant. 

The  country  was  more  broken  beyond.  Pine-trees  of  moderate  size 
grew  beside  girlishly  slender  little  palms  with  fan-shaped  leaves.  A 
high  bank  of  blue  gravel  along  a  dry  river-bed  would  probably  have 
attracted  the  attention  of  a  miner  or  a  geologist.  In  detail  the  country 
was  not  pretty;  in  the  mass  it  was  vastly  so.  Brown,  reddish,  and 
green  hills  were  heaped  up  on  every  hand;  the  play  of  colors  across 
them,  changing  at  every  hour  from  dawn  through  blazing  noonday  into 
dusk  and  finally  moonlight,  made  up  for  the  monotony  of  the  near-by 
landscape.  There  were  almost  no  signs  of  humanity,  the  silence  was 
sometimes  complete,  though  here  and  there  we  passed  the  evidences  of 
former  gardens  in  dry  arroyos.  Toward  sunset  we  burst  suddenly  out 
among  banana-groves,  starting  up  a  great  flock  of  wild  guineas,  and  at 
dark  rode  into  Cerca  la  Source,  a  more  than  usually  whitewashed  little 
town  nestled  among  real  mountains.  It  was  Sunday,  and  the  great 
weekly  cock-fight  having  just  ended  at  the  barrel-stave  pit  in  a  corner 


IN  THE  HAITIAN  BUSH  175 

of  the  immense  open  place,  the  hubbub  of  settling  bets  had  not  yet 
subsided,  and  for  a  half  hour  afterward  scores  of  negroes  with  pretty 
game-cocks  under  their  arms  wandered  about  in  the  moonlight  shouting 
merry  challenges  to  one  another  for  the  ensuing  Sabbath. 

Beyond  Cerca  la  Source  a  steep  mountain  trail  climbs  for  hours 
through  the  stillness  of  pine-forests  where  birds,  except  the  cawing 
crows,  are  rare  and  almost  no  human  habitations  break  the  vista  of 
tumbled  world  over  which  even  the  native  horses  make  their  way  with 
difficulty.  A  telephone  wire  known  among  the  marines  as  the  "  beer- 
bottle  line,"  those  being  the  only  insulators  to  be  had  when  it  was  con- 
structed by  our  forces  of  occupation,  is  the  one  dependable  guide 
through  the  region.  Four  hours  brought  us  to  a  score  of  sorry  huts  in 
a  little  hollow  known  as  La  Miel.  Even  that  had  its  hilltop  gendarmerie 
and  prison,  commanded  by  a  native  sergeant,  who  had  his  force  drawn 
up  for  inspection  when  we  arrived,  though  he  had  no  warning  of  the 
colonel's  approach  or  any  other  proof  of  his  official  character  other  than 
the  blouseless  uniform  he  wore.  A  white  rascal  owning  a  marine  uni- 
form could  play  strange  tricks  in  Haiti.  Even  here  there  was  a  big 
French  bell  of  long  ago  supported  by  poles  at  some  distance  from  the 
broken-backed  church,  and  Spanish  influence  of  the  Dominicans  beyond 
the  now  not  very  distant  border  showed  itself  in  such  slight  matters  as 
the  use  of  "  yo  "  for  "  ge  "  and  "  buen  "  instead  of  "  bon."  There  fol- 
lowed a  not  very  fertile  region,  with  more  pine-trees  and  long,  brown, 
tough  grass,  with  only  here  and  there  a  conuco,  shut  in  by  the  slanted 
pole  fences  native  to  Santo  Domingo,  planted  with  weed-grown  pois 
Congo,  manioc,  and  tropical  tubers.  In  mid-afternoon,  where  the  vege- 
tation grew  more  dense,  it  began  to  rain,  as  we  had  been  warned  it 
would  here  before  our  departure  from  Port  au  Prince.  The  first 
sprinkle  increased  to  a  steady  downpour  by  what  would  probably  have 
been  sunset,  the  trail  became  toboggans  of  red  mud  down  which  our 
weary  animals  skated"  for  long  distances,  or  sloughs  so  deep  and  slopes 
so  steep  that  we  were  forced  to  dismount  and  wade,  or  climb  almost 
on  all  fours.  Dripping  coffee-bushes  under  higher  trees  sometimes 
lined  the  way,  the  best  information  we  got  from  any  of  the  rare 
passers-by  was  that  our  destination  was  a  "  little  big  distance  "  away. 
That  it  remained  until  we  finally  slipped  and  sprawled  our  way  into  it. 

It  rains  the  year  round  in  the  dismal  mountain  village  where  we  spent 
the  night,  until  the  thatched  mud  houses  are  smeared  with  a  reeking 
slime,  and  the  earth  floors  are  like  newly  plowed  garden  patches  in  the 
early  spring.  The  place  was  more  than  three  thousand  feet  above  the 


ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

sea,  and  the  cold  seemed  to  penetrate  to  the  very  marrow  even  within 
doors.  It  was  ruled  with  an  iron  hand  by  an  "  old-timer  "  who  had 
been  so  long-  a  sergeant  in  the  Marine  Corps  that  he  had  come  to  divide 
all  the  world  into  exact  gradations  of  rank.  My  companion  he  un- 
failingly addressed  as  "the  General,"  never  by  the  familiar  pronoun 
"  you,"  and  he  took  personal  charge  of  everything  pertaining  to  his 
comfort,  even  to  removing  his  wet  garments  and  extracting  the  bones 
from  his  chosen  portions  of  chicken.  Nothing  would  induce  him  to  eat 
before  the  general  had  finished  or  to  sit  down  in  his  presence.  My- 
self he  treated  almost  as  an  equal,  or  as  he  might  have  another  sergeant 
who  slightly  outranked  him  in  length  of  service,  with  now  and  then  a 
hint  of  scorn  at  my  merely  civilian  standing.  He  was  probably  as 
small  a  man  as  ever  broke  into  our  military  service,  yet  the  stentorian 
voice  in  which  he  invariably  gave  his  commands  to  the  great  hulking 
negro  who  served  as  cook  in  the  unsheltered  "  kitchen  "  outside  and  as 
general  factotum  about  the  hut  never  failed  to  cause  that  person  to 
prance  with  fear.  The  natives  he  addressed  in  the  same  tone,  and  the 
whole  town  seemed  to  spring  to  attention  when  he  opened  the  door  and 
bawled  out  into  the  night  for  the  mayor  to  *'  Report  here  on  the  double 
quick."  How  the  Haitians  managed  to  understand  his  English  was  a 
mystery,  but  they  lost  no  time  in  obeying  .every  order.  After  the  gen- 
eral had  retired,  the  lieutenant,  for  such  was  his  rank  in  the  gendar- 
merie, confided  to  me  that  he  had  several  books  on  "  Creole  "  and  was 
preparing  to  learn  it.  As  I  had  been  on  the  lookout  for  something  of 
the  kind  since  my  arrival  in  Haiti,  hitherto  in  vain,  I  expressed  a  desire 
to  see  them.  The  lieutenant  cast  aside  a  soaked  tarpaulin  and  handed 
me  half  a  dozen  French  grammars  such  as  are  used  in  our  own 
schools. 

The  colonel's  clothing  was  dry  and  newly  pressed  when  we  set  out 
again  next  morning,  though  my  own  was  still  dripping.  "  Jim's  "  plain 
clothes  were  by  this  time  worthy  a  still  more  commonplace  adjective, 
for  in  addition  to  the  mishaps  of  the  trail,  he  had  spent  the  night  in 
them  on  the  bare  earth  floor  of  the  gendarme  barracks.  There  came  a 
few  more  red  mud  toboggans,  then  we  came  out  on  a  vista  of  half 
northern  Haiti,  to  which  we  descended  by  a  rock  trail  worn  horseback 
deep  in  the  mountain-side  and  so  steep  that  even  "  Jim "  for  once 
deigned  to  dismount.  The  rain  ceased  a  few  hundred  feet  down, 
though  the  sky  remained  dull  and  overcast,  in  striking  contrast  to  the 
speckless  blue  heavens  of  southern  Haiti,  for  the  seasons  are  reversed 
in  the  two  parts  of  the  country.  A  few  hours'  jog  across  another  sa- 


A  corner  of  Christophe's  Citadel.    Its  situation  is  such  that  it  could  only  be  well 
photographed  from  an  airplane 


The  ruins  of  Christophe's  palace  of  Sans  Souci 


IN  THE  HAITIAN  BUSH  177 

vanna  of  denser  vegetation  than  the  plateau  of  St.  Michel  brought  us 
to  the  considerable  town  of  Ouanaminthe,  on  the  Dominican  border, 
where  an  automobile  bore  us  away  to  the  west.  The  great  Plaine  du 
Nord,  once  completely  covered  with  sugar-cane  and  dotted  with  French 
plantation  houses  and  mills,  was  now  a  wilderness  teeming  with  blue- 
legged  wild  guineas,  here  and  there  some  bush-grown  stone  ruins, 
through  which  a  mud  road  and  a  single  telephone  wire  forced  their  way. 
We  passed  the  populous  towns  of  Terrier  Rouge  and  Le  Trou,  famed 
for  their  caco  sympathies,  and  Limonade,  in  the  grass-grown  old  church 
of  which  Christophe,  Emperor  of  northern  Haiti,  was  once  stricken  with 
apoplexy,  and  brought  up  in  the  mud  and  darkness  at  Cap  Ha'itien. 

Meanwhile  Rachel  had  reached  "  the  Cape,"  as  it  is  familiarly  called, 
by  the  usual  route.  Leaving  Ennery,  this  had  begun  at  once  to  climb 
the  mountain  Puilboreau,  winding  in  and  out  along  its  wrinkled  face. 
The  vegetation  was  rather  monotonous,  with  a  yellowish  tinge  to  the 
several  shades  of  green,  now  and  then  an  orange  cactus  blossom,  a 
purple  morning  glory,  a  pink  vine,  or  the  old-gold  bark  of  a  tree  adding 
a  touch  of  color.  The  view  back  down  the  valley,  with  its  tiny  specks 
of  houses,  remained  unbroken  until  they  -reached  the  summit  three 
thousand  feet  above  the  sea  at  Bakersville,  so  called  for  the  marine 
who  had  charge  of  this  difficult  bit  of  road  building,  when  there  burst 
forth  as  far-reaching  a  scene  to  the  north.  The  Plaisance  Valley  lay 
under  the  heavy  gray  veil  of  a  rain-cloud,  the  harbor  of  Cap  Haitien 
visible  far  below,  and  far  off  on  the  horizon  was  the  faint  line  of  what 
seemed  to  be  Tortuga,  chief  of  Haiti's  "  possessions  "  and  once  the  fa- 
vorite residence  of  buccaneers.  The  change  of  landscape  was  abrupt; 
heavy,  dense  green  vegetation  smelling  of  moisture  surrounding  the 
travelers  on  every  hand  as  they  wound  down  the  mountain-side  by  a 
mud-coated  highway,  passing  here  and  there  gangs  of  road  laborers. 
This  northern  slope  was  more  thickly  inhabited,  thatched  huts  conspic- 
uous by  their  damp  brown  against  the  greenery  occasionally  clustering 
together  into  villages  in  which  some  of  the  mud  walls  were  whitewashed 
or  painted.  Market-women  bound  for  "  the  Cape,"  men  grubbing  in 
the  fields,  women  paddling  clothes  —  sometimes  those  in  which  they 
should  have  been  dressed  —  in  the  streams,  all  gave  evidence  of  the 
slighter  dread  of  cacos  on  this  northern  slope.  Then  came  another 
climb  and  a  descent  into  the  valley  of  the  Limbe,  some  miles  along 
which  brought  them  to  the  village  of  the  same  name  and  to  the  greatest 
difficulty  to  the  automobilist  in  Haiti. 

The  fording  of  the  Limbe  is  certain  to  be  the  chief  topic  of  conversa- 


i;8          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

tion  between  those  who  have  traveled  from  Port  au  Prince  to  Cap  Hai- 
tien.  At  times  it  is  impassable,  and  has  been  known  to  delay  travelers 
for  a  week.  This  time  men  and  women  were  crossing  with  bundles  on 
their  heads  and  the  water  barely  up  to  their  armpits.  A  gang  of  pris- 
oners was  brought  from  the  village  gendarmerie,  the  vitals  of  the  car 
removed  and  sent  across  on  their  heads,  then  with  the  passengers  sitting 
on  the  back  of  the  back  seat,  the  baggage  in  their  laps,  the  reunited 
gang,  amid  continual  shrieks  of  "  Poussez!"  and  an  excited  jabbering 
of  "  Creole,"  eventually  dragged  and  pushed  the  dismantled  automobile 
to  the  opposite  shore.  An  hour  and  a  half  passed  between  the  time  it 
halted  on  one  bank  and  started  out  again  from  the  other,  which  was 
close  to  a  record  for  the  crossing.  From  there  on  the  wide,  but  muddy, 
road,  now  thronged  with  people  returning  from  market  with  their  pur- 
chases or  empty  baskets,  passed  many  ruins  of  old  plantations,  and  the 
crumbling  stone  and  plaster  gate-posts  which  once  flanked  the  only 
entrances  to  them. 

Cap  Haitien,  the  second  city  of  Haiti,  sometimes  called  the  "  capital 
of  the  North,"  is  situated  on  a  large  open  bay  in  which  the  winds  fre- 
quently play  havoc.  On  its  outer  reef  the  flagship  of  Columbus  came 
to  grief  on  Christmas  eve,  1492,  and  the  discoverer  spent  Christmas  as 
the  guest  of  the  Indian  chief  who  then  ruled  the  district.  The  wreckage 
of  the  Santa  Maria  was  brought  ashore  near  the  present  fisher  village 
of  Petit  Anse,  and  here  was  erected  the  first  European  fort  in  the  New 
World.  In  the  days  of  Haiti's  prosperity  Cap  Haitien  was  known  as 
the  "  Paris  of  America  "  and  rivaled  in  wealth  and  culture  any  other 
city  in  the  western  hemisphere.  Then  it  had  an  imposing  cathedral, 
several  squares  and  places  decorated  with  fountains  and  statuary,  and 
was  noted  for  its  fine  residences  and  urbane  society.  Old  stone  ruins 
still  stretch  clear  out  to  the  lighthouse  on  a  distant  point.  Destroyed 
by  the  revolting  blacks,  by  Christophe  in  his  wars  against  Petion,  by 
an  earthquake  or  two,  and  by  more  than  a  century  of  neglect  and  tropi- 
cal decay,  it  retains  little  evidence  of  its  former  grandeur.  Some  of  its 
wide  streets,  however,  are  still  stone-paved,  and  bear  names  which  carry 
the  imagination  back  to  medieval  France.  A  few  of  its  citizens  live  in 
moderate  comfort;  the  overwhelming  majority  are  content  to  loll  out 
their  days  in  uncouth  hovels.  It  is  so  populous  that  it  supports  a 
cinema,  and  some  of  its  business  houses  are  moderately  up  to  date  and 
prosperous,  though  these  are  in  most  cases  owned  by  foreigners.  The 
acrid  smell  of  raw  coffee  everywhere  assails  the  nostrils ;  coffee  spread 


IN  THE  HAITIAN  BUSH  179 

out  on  canvas  or  on  the  cement  pavement  of  one  of  its  few  remaining 
squares  is  constantly  being  turned  over  with  wooden  shovels  by  bare- 
footed negroes  who  think  nothing  of  wading  through  it;  here  and 
there  one  passes  a  warehouse  in  which  chattering  old  women  sit  thigh- 
deep  in  coffee,  clawing  over  the  berries  with  their  fleshless  black  talons. 
Its  market-place  is  large  and  presents  the  usual  chaos  of  wares  and 
hubbub  of  bargaining;  its  blue  vaulted  cathedral  easily  proves  its  an- 
tiquity, and  American  marines  are  everywhere  in  evidence.  On  the 
whole,  its  populace  is  somewhat  less  ragged  than  that  of  Port  au  Prince, 
but  whatever  it  lacks  in  picturesqueness  is  made  up  for  by  the  view  of 
its  surrounding  mountains  crowned  by  the  great  Citadel  of  Christophe. 

Election  day  came  during  our  stay  at  "the  Cape."  In  olden  times 
such  an  event  was  worth  coming  far  to  see,  provided  one  could  keep  out 
of  the  frequent  melees  accompanying  it.  Under  the  Americans  it  is 
tame  in  the  extreme.  To  obviate  the  necessity  of  counting  more  votes 
than  there  are  inhabitants,  the  marines  have  introduced  a  plan  charm- 
ing in  its  simplicity.  As  he  casts  his  ballot,  each  voter  is  required  to 
dip  the  end  of  his  right  forefinger  in  a  solution  of  nitrate  of  silver. 
The  nail  of  course  turns  black,  for  the  finger-nails  even  of  a  negro  are 
ordinarily  light  colored, —  and  remains  so  until  election  day  is  over. 
Far  be  it  from  me  to  suggest  that  such  a  scheme  might  be  adopted  to 
advantage  in  our  own  country.  A  few  district  commanders,  to  make 
doubly  sure,  use  iodine.  The  rank  and  file  accept  this  formality  as 
cheerfully  as  they  do  every  other  incomprehensible  requirement  of  their 
new  white  rulers,  most  of  them  making  the  sign  of  the  cross  with  the 
wet  finger.  But  the  haughty  "gens  de  coideur"  are  apt  to  protest 
loudly  against  this  "  implied  insult  to  my  honor,"  and  if  they  can  catch 
the  American  official  off  his  guard,  are  sure  to  dip  in  the  wrong  finger 
or  merely  make  a  false  pass  over  the  liquid,  meanwhile  scowling  into 
silence  the  low-caste  native  watchers. 

Haiti  has  long  dreamed  of  some  day  uniting  the  several  bits  of  minia- 
ture railroad  scattered  about  the  country  into  a  single  line  between  the 
two  principal  cities.  The  existing  section  in  the  north,  twenty  odd 
miles  in  length,  connects  Cap  Haitien  with  Grande  Riviere  and  Bahon. 
Its  fares,  like  those  of  the  equally  primitive  lines  out  of  Port  au  Prince, 
are  so  low  that  for  once  the  assertions  of  the  owners  that  they  lose 
money  on  passengers  can  be  accepted  without  a  grin  of  incredulity. 
To  raise  them,  however,  is  not  so  simple  a  matter  as  it  may  seem,  for 
the  Haitian  masses  are  little  inclined  as  it  is  to  part  with  their  rare 
gourdes  for  the  mere  privilege  of  saving  their  calloused  feet.  There 


i8o          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

were  far  more  travelers  along  the  broad  highway  out  of  "  the  Cape  " 
than  in  the  little  cars  themselves  in  which  we  followed  it  through  a 
region  that  might  have  been  highly  productive  had  it  been  as  diligently 
tended  by  man  as  by  nature.  The  train  stopped  frequently  and  long 
at  forest-choked  clusters  of  negro  huts  varying  only  in  size.  Such 
scenes  had  grown  so  commonplace  that  we  found  more  of  interest  in  the 
car  itself,  particularly  among  the  marines  who  sprawled  over  several  of 
the  seats.  The  majority  of  our  forces  of  occupation  are  so  decidedly 
a  credit  to  their  country  that  it  needed  the  contrast  of  such  types  as 
these  to  explain  why  the  "  Gooks,"  as  the  natives  are  popularly  known 
among  their  class,  generally  resent  our  presence  on  Haitian  soil.  Loud- 
mouthed, profane,  constantly  passing  around  a  grass-bound  gallon, 
bottle  of  rum,  and  boasting  of  their  conquests  among  the  negro  girls, 
they  were  far  less  agreeable  traveling  companions  than  the  blackest  of 
the  natives.  Their  "  four  years'  cruise  in  Hate-eye,"  one  would  have 
supposed  in  listening  to  them,  was  a  constant  round  of  these  things  and 
"  fighting  chickens,"  with  an  occasional  opportunity  of  "  putting  a  lot 
of  families  in  mourning  "  thrown  in.  Yet  underneath  it  all  they  were 
good-hearted,  cheerful,  and  generous,  despite  the  notion  prevalent 
among  too  many  Americans  that  boisterousness  and  rowdyism  is  a 
proof  of  courage  and  manhood. 

Grande  Riviere  is  a  town  of  some  consequence  in  Haiti,  prettily  situ- 
ated in  a  river  valley  among  green  hills.  Its  grassy  place  and  the 
unfailing  "  patrie"  in  its  center  are  decided  improvements  on  most  of 
those  in  the  republic;  the  several  large  church  bells  under  a  roof  of 
their  own  at  some  distance  from  the  building  itself  still  retain  their 
musical  French  voices.  A  dyewood  establishment  is  its  chief  single  in- 
dustry. The  crooked  logwood,  carved  down  to  the  red  heart  before  it 
leaves  the  forests,  is  gnawed  to  bits  by  a  noisy  machine,  boiled  in  a  sue 
cession  of  vats,  the  red  water  running  off  through  sluiceways,  and  the 
waste  tossed  out  to  dry  and  serve  as  fuel,  and  the  concentrated  product, 
thick  as  molasses,  is  inclosed  in  barrels  for  shipment.  Scarcely  an  hour 
passes  between  the  picking  up  of  a  log  and  the  rolling  away  of  the 
barrel  containing  its  extract. 

But  of  all  the  sights  in  any  Haitian  town  the  market-place  is  surest 
to  attract  the  idle  traveler.  It  was  Saturday,  or  beef  day,  and  two 
long  lines  of  venders  were  dispensing  mere  nibbles  of  meat  to  the 
clamoring  throng  of  purchasers,  no  portion  of  the  animal  being  too 
uninviting  to  escape  consumption.  Of  a  hundred  little  squares  on  the 
ground  dotted  with  "  piles  "  of  miscellaneous  wares  the  inventory  we 


IN  THE  HAITIAN  BUSH  181 

made  of  one  is  characteristic  of  all,  and  its  sum  total  of  value  probably 
did  not  reach  two  dollars.  There  were  long,  square  strips  of  yellow 
soap,  brooms  and  ropes  made  of  jungle  plants,  castor-beans  (the  oil 
from  which  is  used  in  native  lamps),  unhulled  rice,  all  kinds  of  woven 
things  from  baskets  to  saddle-bags,  peanuts,  green  plantains,  pitch-pine 
kindling  for  torches,  huge  sheets  of  cassava  bread,  folded  twice,  rock 
salt,  gay  calicoes,  all  tropical  fruits,  unground  pepper,  old  nails,  loose 
matches,  cinnamon  bark,  peanut  and  jijimi  sweets,  pewter  spoons,  scis- 
sors, thread,  little  marbles  of  blue  dye,  unassorted  buttons,  cheap  knives, 
safety-pins,  yarn,  tiny  red  clay  pipes  and  the  reed  stems  to  go  with 
them,  rusted  square  spikes  of  the  kind  used  a  century  ago,  shelled  corn, 
ground  corn,  pitimi,  several  kinds  of  beans,  tiny  scraps  of  leather,  four 
tin  cans  from  a  marine  messroom,  five  bottles  of  as  many  shapes  and 
sizes,  one  old  shoe,  and  a  handful  of  red  berries  used  in  Haiti  as  beads. 

A  bare  five  days  from  New  York  stands  the  most  massive,  probably 
the  most  impressive  single  ruin  in  America.  One  might  go  farther  and 
say  that  there  are  few  man-built  structures  in  Europe  that  can  equal 
in  mightiness  and  in  the  extraordinary  difficulties  overcome  in  its  con- 
struction this  chief  sight  of  the  West  Indies.  Only  the  pyramids  of 
Egypt,  in  at  least  the  familiar  regions  of  the  earth,  can  compare  with 
this  gigantic  monument  to  the  strength  and  perseverance  of  puny  man, 
and  the  pyramids  are  built  down  on  the  floor  of  the  earth  instead  of 
being  borne  aloft  to  the  tiptop  of  a  mountain.  It  is  curious,  yet  sym- 
bolical of  our  ignorance  of  the  neighbors  of  our  o\vn  hemisphere,  that 
while  most  Americans  know  of  far  less  remarkable  structures  in  Europe, 
not  one  in  a  hundred  of  us  has  ever  heard  of  the  great  Haitian  Citadel 
of  Christophe. 

We  caught  our  first  view  of  it  from  "  the  Cape."  The  January  day 
had  broken  in  a  flood  of  tropical  sunshine,  which  brought  out  every 
crack  and  wrinkle  of  the  long  mountain-range  cutting  its  jagged  outline 
in  the  Haitian  sky  to  the  southward  of  the  city.  On  the  top  of  its  high- 
est peak,  called  the  "  Bishop's  Bonnet,"  stood  forth  a  square-cut  summit 
which  only  the  preinformed  could  have  believed  was  the  work  of  man. 
Twenty-five  miles  away  it  looked  like  an  enormons  hack  in  the  mountain 
itself,  a  curious  natural  formation  which  man  could  never  have  imi- 
tated except  on  a  tiny  scale.  It  is  a  standing  joke  in  Cap  Ha'itien  to 
listen  in  all  solemnity  to  newcomers  laughing  to  scorn  the  assertions  of 
the  residents  that  this  distant  mountain  summit  was  fashioned  by  human 
hands. 


182  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

Now  and  again  as  we  journeyed  toward  it  on  the  little  railroad  to 
Grande  Riviere  we  had  a  glimpse  of  the  citadel  through  the  dense  tropi- 
cal vegetation,  yet  so  slowly  did  it  increase  in  size  that  its  massiveness 
became  all  the  more  incredible.  Where  we  descended  at  a  cross-trail 
in  the  forest  a  group  of  small  Haitian  horses  was  already  awaiting  us. 
The  gendarme  officer  in  charge  of  them  was  a  powerful  young  American 
beside  whom  a  native  of  the  color  known  as  griffe,  in  civilian  garb, 
looked  like  a  half-grown  boy.  For  the  pilots  assigned  us  on  this  excur- 
sion were  none  other  than  Captain  Hanneken  and  Jean  Batiste,  now 
Lieutenant,  Conze,  the  exterminators  of  Charlemagne. 

The  trail  broke  out  at  length  into  a  wide  clearing  which  stretched 
away  as  far  as  the  eye  could  follow  in  each  direction,  its  grassy  surface 
cut  up  by  several  wandering  paths  along  which  plodded  a  few  natives 
and  a  donkey  or  two.  It  was  once  the  "  royal  highway  "  between  Chris- 
tophe's  main  palace  and  Cap  Haitien,  outdoing  in  width  the  broadest 
boulevards  of  Europe.  An  hour  or  more  along  this  brought  us  to 
Milot,  a  small  town  lined  up  on  each  side  of  the  road  like  people 
awaiting  a  procession  of  royalty.  At  the  back  of  it  the  highway  ended 
at  a  great  crumbling  ruin  which  had  about  it  something  suggestive  of 
Versailles. 

Christophe's  palace  of  Sans  Souci,  for  such  it  was,  is  wholly  unin- 
habitable to-day,  yet  there  is  still  enough  of  it  standing  to  indicate  that 
it  was  once  one  of  the  most  ornate  and  commodious  structures  in  the 
western  hemisphere.  Two  pairs  of  mammoth  gate-posts,  square  in 
form  and  nearly  twenty  feet  high,  guard  the  entrance  to  the  lower  yard- 
platform,  bounded  by  a  heavy  stone  wall.  On  the  inside  these  are  hol- 
lowed out  into  unexpected  sentry-boxes,  for  Christophe  was  a  strong 
believer  in  many  guards.  Higher  up,  sustained  by  a  still  stronger  wall, 
is  another  grassy  platform,  from  which  a  stairway  as  broad  and  elabo- 
rate as  any  trodden  by  European  sovereigns  leads  sidewise  to  a  balus- 
traded  entrance  court,  also  flanked  by  sentry-boxes.  Crumbling  walls 
in  which  many  s:nall  bushes  have  found  a  foothold  tower  high  aloft 
above  this  to  where  they  are  broken  off  in  jagged  irregularity.  The 
palace  was  evidently  5ve  stories  high,  built  of  native  brick  and  plaster, 
and  the  architecture  is  still  impressive  despite  its  dilapidated  condition 
and  for  all  its  African-minded  ostentation.  The  roof  has  completely 
given  way,  and  in  the  vast  halls  of  the  lower  floor  grow  wild  oranges 
and  tropical  bush.  Those  higher  up,  of  which  only  the  edges  of  the 
floors  and  the  walls  remain,  are  said  to  have  included  a  great  ball-room, 
an  immense  billiard-hall,  separate  suites  for  the  emperor  and  his  black 


IN  THE  HAITIAN  BUSH  183 

consort,  and  apartments  for  the  immediate  royal  family.  At  some  dis- 
tance from  the  palace  proper  stand  the  lower  walls  of  the  former  lodg- 
ings of  minor  princes,  a  host  of  courtiers,  the  stables,  and  the  caserns. 
The  several  parterres,  once  covered  with  rare  flowers  watered  by  irri- 
gating canals,  are  mere  tangles  of  jungle.  The  caimite-tree  under 
which  the  black  tyrant  is  said  to  have  sat  in  judgment  on  his  subjects, 
after  the  example  of  Louis  IX  of  France,  still  casts  its  mammoth  shade 
in  the  back  courtyard ;  a  small  chapel  lower  down  that  was  probably 
used  by  the  lesser  nobles  serves  Milot  as  a  church;  with  those  excep- 
tions there  is  little  left  as  Christophe  saw  it.  Our  forces  of  occupation 
are  threatening  to  tear  down  the  walls,  which  are  soon  likely  to  fall  of 
themselves,  to  clear  away  the  vegetation,  and  to  build  barracks  of  the 
materials  that  remain. 

The  narrow  trail  that  zigzags  from  the  back  of  the  palace  up  the 
mountain  may  not  be  the  one  by  which  those  condemned  under  the 
ccw'wite-tree  were  carried  or  dragged  to  their  death  before  the  ram- 
parts of  the  citadel,  but  there  remain  no  evidences  of  any  other  route. 
Much  of  the  way  it  is  all  but  impassable  even  during  a  lull  in  the  rainy 
season,  for  the  dense  vegetation  shuts  out  the  sun  that  might  otherwise 
harden  the  mud  in  which  the  hardiest  native  horses  frequently  wallow 
belly-deep  and  now  and  then  give  up  in  frank  despair.  For  a  time  it 
leads  through  banana-  and  mango-groves,  with  huts  swarming  with 
negro  babies  here  and  there  peering  forth  from  the  thick  undergrowth ; 
higher  still  there  is  a  bit  of  coffee,  but  the  last  two  thirds  of  the  jour- 
ney upward  is  wholly  uninhabited.  Only  once  or  twice  in  the  ascent 
does  one  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  goal  until  one  emerges  from  a  brown 
jungle  of  giant  grasses,  to  find  its  grim  gray  walls  towering  sheer  over- 
head. 

Before  this  mammoth  structure  the  memory  of  Sans  Souci  sinks  into 
insignificance.  As  the  latter  is  ornate  and  cheerful  in  architecture,  the 
citadel  is  savage  in  its  unadorned  masculine  strength.  The  mighty  stone 
walls,  twenty  feet  thick  in  many  cases,  are  square-cut  and  formidable 
in  their  great  unbroken  surfaces.  The  northern  side  is  red  with  fungus, 
the  rest  merely  weather-dulled.  Even  the  cannon  of  to-day  would  find 
them  worthy  adversaries.  Time,  which  has  wrought  such  havoc  on  the 
palace  at  the  mountain's  foot,  has  scarcely  made  an  impression  on  the 
exterior  of  this  cyclopean  structure,  and  even  within  only  the  wooden 
portions  have  given  way.  Great  iron-studded  doors  groaning  on  their 
mammoth  hinges  give  admittance  to  an  endless  labyrinth  of  gloomy 
chambers,  dungeon-like  in  all  but  their  astonishing  size.  Cannon  of 


184          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

the  largest  makes  known  when  the  fortress  was  constructed  are  to  "DC 
found  everywhere,  some  of  them  still  pointing  dizzily  out  their  em- 
brasures, stretching  in  row  after  row  of  superimposed  batteries,  others 
lying  where  the  rotting  of  their  heavy  wooden  supports  has  left  them. 
Many  bear  the  royal  arms  of  Spain's  most  famous  monarchs,  several 
those  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  and  the  rest  evidences  of  English  and  French 
origin.  Tradition  has  it  that  Christophe  mounted  three  hundred  and 
sixty-five  cannon  of  large  caliber  in  the  citadel,  and  it  is  small  wonder 
that  his  successors  have  not  had  the  courage  to  attempt  to  remove  them. 
The  imagination  grows  numb  and  helpless  at  the  thought  of  transport-- 
ing these  immense  weapons  by  mere  man  power  to  the  summit  of  a  steep 
mountain  three  thousand  feet  above  the  plain  below.  Yet  not  only 
these,  but  the  uncounted  mammoth  blocks  of  stone  of  which  the  acres  of 
thick  walls  are  constructed,  the  mortars,  the  iron  chests,  the  smaller 
cannon,  the  heaps  of  huge  iron  cannon-supports,  the  pyramids  of  cannon- 
balls  that  are  found  wherever  the  footsteps  turn  in  the  clammy  chambers 
or  the  jungle-grown  cou-rtyards,  were  all  brought  here  by  sheer  force 
of  human  arms. 

Higher  and  higher  the  visitor  mounts  by  great  dank  stairways  through 
story  after  story  of  immense  rooms,  the  vaulted  stone  ceilings  of  a  few 
partly  fallen  in,  most  of  them  wholly  intact,  all  dedicated  to  the  grim 
business  of  war,  to  come  out  at  last  in  an  upper  courtyard  with  the  ruins 
of  a  chapel  and  the  mammoth  stone  vault  in  which  Christophe  lies 
buried.  Some  of  the  marvels  of  the  place  are  the  stone  basins  always 
full  of  clear  running  water,  the  source  of  which  no  man  has  ever  been 
able  to  discover.  Here  the  group  of  prisoners  whom  the  captain  had 
sent  ahead  with  the  paraphernalia  and  provisions  for  an  elaborate  picnic 
lunch  were  shivering  in  their  thin  striped  garments  until  their  black 
faces  seemed  to  be  blurred  of  outline.  Yet  they  had  less  cause  to 
tremble  than  their  fellows  of  a  century  ago  who  were  herded  in  this 
same  inclosure  to  await  their  turn  for  being  thrown  from  the  ramparts 
above.  For  such  was  Christophe's  favorite  method  of  capital  punish- 
ment. The  throwing-off  place  is  a  long  stone  platform  ten  feet  wide 
at  the  very  top  of  the  citadel.  From  its  edge  the  sheer  wall  drops  to  a 
sickening  depth  before  it  joins  the  mountain-slope  almost  as  steep, 
forming  that  great  hack  in  the  summit  which  looks  from  "  the  Cape  " 
like  a  natural  precipice.  Men  hurled  from  this  height  must  have  fallen 
nearly  a  thousand  feet  before  they  struck  the  bushy  boulder-strewn 
face  of  the  mountain,  down  which  their  mutilated  remains  bounded  and 
slid  to  where  they  brought  up  against  a  ledge  of  rock  or  a  larger  bush, 


IN  THE  HAITIAN  BUSH  185 

there  to  lie  until  their  whitened  bones  crumbled  into  dust.  Multitudes 
of  his  subjects  are  said  to  have  met  this  fate  under  the  black  tyrant, 
some  in  punishment  for  real  crimes,  more  for  having  unintentionally 
aroused  his  enmity  or  to  satisfy  his  whims.  The  story  goes  that  Chris- 
tophe  and  his  British  ambassador  once  got  into  a  friendly  argument  on 
the  subject  of  soldierly  discipline.  The  black  emperor  contended  that 
there  was  no  order  which  his  troops  would  not  unhesitatingly  obey, 
and  to  prove  his  point  he  led  his  guest  to  the  top  of  the  citadel,  where 
he  set  a  company  to  drilling  and  at  a  given  command  caused  it  to  march 
off  the  edge  of  the  wall.  This  particular  tale  should  perhaps  be  taken 
with  a  grain  of  salt,  but  there  is  unquestionable  evidence  of  similar  play- 
ful acts  on  the  part  of  the  heartless  monarch. 

Once  the  visitor  can  withdraw  his  eyes  from  the  jagged  Golgotha 
below,  the  view  spread  out  before  him  is  rivaled  by  few  in  the  world. 
All  Haiti  seems  to  be  visible  in  every  detail :  the  ocean,  the  entire  course 
of  meandering  rivers,  high  mountains,  deep  valleys,  a  sea  of  greenery, 
form  a  circular  panorama  bounded  only  by  the  limitless  horizon.  Little 
houses  in  tiny  clearings  on  the  plain  below,  a  dozen  towns  and  villages, 
"  the  Cape,"  Ouanaminthe,  even  the  hills  of  Santo  Domingo,  stand 
forth  as  clearly  as  if  they  were  only  a  bare  mile  away,  some  flashing 
in  the  tropical  sunshine,  others  dulled  by  the  great  cloud  shadows  crawl- 
ing languidly  across  the  landscape. 

Henri  Christophe  was  a  full-blooded  negro  who  passed  the  early  days 
of  his  life  as  the  slave  of  a  French  planter.  When  the  blacks  rose 
against  their  masters  he  led  the  revolt  on  his  own  plantation  and  quickly 
avenged  his  years  of  bondage.  Serving  first  as  a  common  soldier  under 
Toussaint  1'Ouverture,  he  rose  to  the  rank  of  general  and  became  one  of 
the  chief  supporters  of  Dessalines.  The  assassination  of  the  latter  in 
1806  left  Christophe  commander-in-chief  of  the  Haitian  forces  and  led 
to  his  election  as  the  first  President  of  Haiti.  His  first  official  act  was 
to  protest  against  the  newly  adopted  constitution  on  the  ground  that  it 
did  not  give  him  sufficient  power.  Civil  war  broke  out  between  him 
and  the  mulatto  general  Petion,  who  drove  him  into  the  north  and 
became  president  in  his  place,  leaving  Christophe  the  official  ranking  of 
an  outlaw.  Petion,  however,  was  never  able  to  conquer  his  rival.  Pro- 
claiming himself  president  under  a  new  constitution  drawn  up  by  an 
assembly  of  his  own  choosing,  the  rebel  took  possession  of  the  northern 
half  of  the  country  and  ruled  it  for  thirteen  long  years  with  one  of  the 
bloodiest  hands  known  to  history. 

In  1811  he  proclaimed  himself  king,  honored  his  black  consort  with 


i86          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

the  title  of  queen,  and  proceeded  to  form  a  Haitian  nobility  consisting 
of  his  own  numerous  children  as  "  princes  of  the  royal  blood,"  three 
"  princes  of  the  kingdom,"  eighf  "  dukes,"  twenty  "  counts,"  thirty- 
seven  "  barons,"  and  eleven  "  chevaliers,"  each  and  all  of  them  former 
slaves  or  the  descendants  of  slaves.  These  jet-black  "  nobles,"  many 
of  whom  added  to  their  titles  the  names  of  such  native  towns  as  Li- 
monade,  Marmalade,  and  the  like,  soon  became  the  laughing-stock  of 
more  advanced  civilizations,  though  candor  forces  the  admission  that 
Christophe  was  only  following  the  example  of  those  who  ennobled  the 
robber  barons  of  Europe  in  earlier  centuries,  with  the  slight  difference 
in  the  matter  of  complexions.  As  "  King  Henry  "  he  surrounded  him- 
self with  all  the  pomp  and  ceremony  of  royalty,  erected  nine  palaces, 
of  which  Sans  Souci  was  the  most  magnificent  and  the  only  one  that  has 
not  completely  disappeared,  built  eight  royal  chateaux,  maintained  great 
stables  of  horses  and  royal  coaches,  innumerable  retainers  and  servants, 
and  a  tremendous  bodyguard.  Later,  feeling  that  he  had  not  done  him- 
self full  honor,  he  named  himself  hereditary  emperor  under  the  title 
of  "  Henri  I,"  and  having  come  within  an  ace  of  conquering  the  entire 
country,  settled  down  to  govern  his  portion  of  it  in  a  manner  that  would 
have  been  the  envy  of  Nero. 

The  name  of  Cbristophe,  in  so  far  as  it  is  known  at  all,  is  synony- 
mous with  unbridled  brutality.  Yet  there  is  a  certain  violent  virtue 
in  the  efforts  by  which  the  ex-slave  sought  to  force  his  unprogressive 
black  subjects  to  climb  the  slippery  ladder  of  civilization.  He  founded 
schools,  distributed  the  estates  of  the  exiled  Frenchmen  among  the 
veterans  of  his  army,  reestablished  commercial  relations  with  England 
and  the  United  States,  created  workshops  in  which  the  word  "  can't " 
was  taboo.  His  methods  were  simple  and  direct.  Causing  a  French 
carriage  to  be  placed  at  the  disposition  of  his  workmen,  he  ordered  them 
to  produce  another  exactly  like  it  within  a  fortnight  on  pain  of  death. 
Similar  tasks  were  meted  out  in  all  lines  of  endeavor,  the  tyrant  refus- 
ing to  admit  that  what  white  men  could  do  his  black  subjects  could  not 
do  also.  His  despotism,  however,  was  not  bounded  by  the  mere  desire 
for  advancement.  When  he  passed,  the  people  were  compelled  to  kneel, 
and  death  was  the  portion  of  the  man  who  dared  look  upon  his  face 
without  permission.  Thievery  he  abhorred,  and  inflicted  capital  punish- 
ment for  the  mere  stealing  of  a  chicken.  It  came  to  be  a  regular  part 
of  his  daily  life  to  order  men,  women,  and  even  children  thrown  from 
the  summit  of  the  citadel. 

Tradition  asserts  that  thirty  thousand  of  his  black  subjects  perished 


IN  THE  HAITIAN  BUSH  187 

in  the  building  of  this  chief  monument  to  his  ambition.  All  the  French 
and  Belgian  architects  and  the  skilled  mechanics  who  worked  on  it  are 
said  to  have  been  assassinated  when  it  was  finished.  The  tale  is  still 
going  the  rounds  in  Haiti  that  the  emperor  once  came  upon  a  gang  of 
workmen  idling  about  one  of  the  massive  blocks  of  stone  destined  for 
the  citadel  above,  and  demanded  the  reason  for  their  inaction. 

'*  It  is  too  heavy,  Sire,"  replied  the  workmen ;  "  we  cannot  carry  it 
to  the  mountain-top." 

"  Line  up,"  ordered  the  tyrant ;  then  turning  to  his  bodyguard,  he 
commanded,  "  Shoot  every  fourth  man.  Perhaps  you  will  feel  stronger 
now,"  he  remarked  to  the  survivors  as  he  rode  onward. 

On  his  return,  however,  the  stone  was  no  higher  up  the  hill. 

"  It  is  quite  impossible,  your  Majesty,"  gasped  the  foreman ;  "  it  will 
not  budge." 

"  Throw  that  man  from  the  precipice,"  said  the  despot,  "  and  repeat 
the  order  of  this  morning." 

The  remaining  workmen,  according  to  the  tale,  succeeded  in  carrying 
the  stone  to  its  destination. 

Such  stories  always  hover  about  those  mighty  monuments  that  seem 
impossible  without  supernatural  aid,  yet  no  one  who  has  beheld  the  suc- 
cess with  which  the  forces  of  gravity  have  been  d'erided  in  this  incred' 
ible  undertaking,  incredible  even  in  the  enormousness  of  the  structure 
itself  without  taking  into  account  its  extraordinary  situation,  will  ques- 
tion its  cost  in  such  details  as  a  few  thousand  more  or  less  human  lives. 
Obsessed  with  the  idea  that  the  French  would  try  to  reconquer  the 
country,  Christophe  had  resolved  to  erect  a  stronghold  that  would  be 
an  impregnable  place  of  resistance  against  them,  or  at  worst  a  "  nest- 
egg  of  liberty,"  which  would  afford  certain  refuge  to  the  defenseurs 
de  la  patrie  until  better  days  dawned  for  them.  There  he  stored  vast 
quantities  of  grain  and  food,  of  ammunition,  flints,  bullets,  powder, 
soggy  heaps  of  whicli  are  still  to  be  found,  clothing,  tools,  and  a  gold 
reserve  amounting  to  more  than  thirty  million  dollars.  His  enemies 
saw  in  the  citadel  only  a  pretext  to  indulge  his  innate  barbarism,  to 
decimate  his  people  for  the  mere  pleasure  of  playing  Nero.  It  may  be 
that  this  is  not  a  just  verdict.  Christophe  felt  that  he  incarnated  the 
soul  of  his  black  brethren  and  that  belief  made  him  wholly  insensible 
to  any  other  consideration.  The  mere  fact  that  his  lack  of  perspective 
and  his  ignorance  of  such  details  as  the  feeding  of  a  long-besieged  gar- 
rison made  his  seemingly  impregnable  fortress  an  utter  waste  of  effort 
may  speak  poorly  for  the  instruction  which  his  French  masters  gave 


i88          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

him,  but  it  does  not  belittle  the  actual  accomplishment  of  his  superhuman 
undertaking. 

Christophe  as  violently  died  as  he  had  lived.  Stricken  with  apoplexy 
in  the  church  of  Limonade,  he  attempted  to  cure  himself  by  heroic 
measures,  such  as  rum  and  red-pepper  baths.  Finding  this  of  no  avail 
and  refusing  to  outlive  his  despotic  power  over  his  subjects,  he  shot 
himself  through  the  head.  Barely  was  his  body  cold,  if  we  are  to  be- 
lieve current  stories,  when  his  officers  and  retainers  sacked  the  palace 
of  Sans  Souci  in  which  it  lay,  the  wealth  of  many  Haitian  families  of 
this  day  being  based  on  the  spoils  from  this  and  his  other  royal  resi- 
dences. The  corpse  was  carried  to  the  citadel  and  covered  with  quick 
lime,  but  tradition  asserts  that  it  retained  its  life-like  appearance  for 
many  years  afterward  and  was  on  view  to  all  who  cared  to  peer  through 
the  glass  heading  of  the  vault  until  a  later  ruler  decreed  this  exposition 
"  indecent,"  and  ordered  the  remains  to  be  covered  with  earth. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE   LAND   OF    BULLET-HOLES 

OUANAMINTHE  is  the  Haitian  "  Creole  "  name  for  a  town 
which  the  Spaniards  founded  under  the  more  euphonious 
title  of  Juana  Mendez.  It  is  the  eastern  frontier  station  for 
those  who  travel  overland  by  the  northern  route  from  Haiti  to  Santo 
Domingo.  We  might  have  been  stranded  there  indefinitely  but  for  the 
already  familiar  kindness  of  our  fellow-countrymen  in  uniform  who  are 
scattered  throughout  the  negro  republic.  Public  conveyances  are  un- 
known in  Ouanaminthe.  Strangers  are  more  than  rare,  and  the  natives 
trust  to  their  own  broad,  hoof-like  feet.  Walking  is  all  very  well  for  a 
lone  bachelor  with  no  other  cares  than  a  half-filled  knapsack.  But  with 
a  wife  to  consider,  the  long  trail  loses  something  of  its  primitive  sim- 
plicity; moreover  there  sat  our  baggage  staring  us  in  the  face  with  a 
contrite,  don't-abandon-me  air.  In  what  would  otherwise  have  been 
our  sad  predicament,  Captain  Verner,  commanding  the  gendarmerie  of 
Ouanaminthe,  came  to  our  rescue  most  delicately  with  the  assertion  that 
he  had  long  been  planning  to  run  over  to  Monte  Cristi  on  a  pressing 
matter  of  business. 

The  captain's  Ford  —  his  own,  be  it  noted  in  passing,  lest  some  com- 
mittee of  investigation  prick  up  its  ears  —  was  soon  swimming  the 
frontier  river  Massacre  with  that  amphibean  ease  which  the  adaptable 
"  flivver  "  quickly  acquires  in  the  often  bridgeless  West  Indies.  The 
change  from  one  civilization  to  another  —  or  should  I  call  them  two 
attempts  toward  civilization  ?  —  was  as  sudden,  as  astonishingly  abrupt, 
as  the  dash  through  the  apparently  unfordable  stream.  Dajabon, 
strewn  from  the  sandy  crest  of  the  eastern  bank  to  the  arid  plains 
beyond,  reminded  us  at  once  of  Cuba ;  to  my  own  mind  it  brought  back 
the  memory  of  hundreds  of  Spanish-American  towns  scattered  down 
the  western  hemisphere  from  the  Rio  Grande  to  Patagonia.  With  one 
slight  exception  the  island  of  Santo  Domingo  is  the  only  one  in  the 
New  World  that  is  divided  between  two  nationalities ;  it  is  the  only  one 
on  earth,  unless  my  geography  be  at  fault,  where  the  rank  and  file  speak 
two  different  languages.  Yet  the  shallow  Massacre  is  as  definite  a 
dividing  line  as  though  it  were  a  hundred  leagues  of  sea. 

189 


190          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

Unlike  the  Haitian  shacks  behind  us,  the  dwellings  of  Dajabon  were 
almost  habitable,  even  to  the  exacting  Northern  point  of  view.  Instead 
of  tattered  and  ludicrously  patched  negroes  of  bovine  temperament 
lolling  in  the  shade  of  as  ragged  hovels  of  palm-leaves  and  jungle  rub- 
bish, comparatively  well-dressed  men  and  women,  ranging  in  com- 
plexion from  light  brown  to  pale  yellow,  sat  in  chairs  on  projecting 
verandas  or  leaned  on  their  elbows  in  open  windows,  staring  with 
that  fixed  attention  which  makes  the  most  hardened  stranger  self- 
conscious  in  Spanish-America,  yet  which,  contrasted  with  the  vacant 
black  faces  of  Haiti,  was  an  evidence  at  least  of  human  intelligence 
and  curiosity.  The  village  girls,  decked  out  in  their  Sunday-afternoon 
best,  were  often  attractive  in  appearance,  some  undeniably  pretty,  quali- 
ties which  only  an  observer  of  African  ancestry  could  by  any  stretch 
of  generosity  grant  to  the  belles  of  the  Haitian  bourgs  behind  us. 

Even  the  change  in  landscape  was  striking.  Whether  the  Spaniard 
colonized  by  choice  those  regions  which  remind  him  of  the  dry  and 
rarely  shaded  plains  of  his  own  Castille  and  Aragon,  or  because  he 
makes  way  with  a  forest  wherever  he  sees  one,  he  is  more  apt  than  not 
to  be  surrounded  by  bare,  brown,  semi-arid  vistas.  Haiti  had,  on  the 
whole,  been  densely  wooded ;  luxuriant  vegetation,  plentifully  watered, 
spread  away  on  every  hand.  The  great  plain  that  stretched  out  before 
us  beyond  Dajabon  was  almost  treeless ;  except  for  a  scattering  of 
withered,  thorny  bushes,  there  was  scarcely  a  growing  thing.  The 
rainfall  that  had  been  so  frequent  in  the  land  of  the  blacks  behind  us 
seemed  not  to  have  crossed  the  frontier  in  months.  In  contrast  to 
coco-impoverished  Haiti,  large  herds  of  cattle  wandered  about  the  brown 
immensity,  or  huddled  in  the  rare  pretenses  of  shade ;  but  what  they 
found  to  feed  on  was  a  mystery,  for  there  was  nothing  in  the  scarce, 
scanty  patches  of  sun-burned  herbage  that  could  have  been  dignified 
with  the  name  of  grass.  Even  where  something  resembling  a  forest 
appeared  farther  on  it  turned  out  to  be  a  dismal  wilderness  of  dwarf 
trees  with  spiny  trunks  and  savage  thorny  branches  without  a  sug- 
gestion of  undergrowth  or  ground  plants  beneath  them.  Dead,  flat, 
monotonous,  made  doubly  mournful  by  the  occasional  moan  of  a  wild 
dove,  a  more  dreary,  uninspiring  landscape  it  would  be  hard  to  imagine ; 
the  vista  that  spread  away  as  far  as  the  eye  could  see  seemed  wholly 
uninviting  to  human  habitation. 

It  must  be  an  unpromising  region,  however,  that  does  not  produce 
at  least  its  crop  of  mankind.  Clusters  of  thrown-together  huts,  little 
less  miserable  in  these  rural  districts,  it  must  be  admitted,  than  those 


THE  LAND  OF  BULLET-HOLES  191 

of  Haiti,  jolted  past  us  now  and  then,  their  swarms  of  stark-naked 
children  of  eight,  ten,  and  even  twelve  years  of  age  scampering  out 
across  the  broken,  sun-hardened  ground  to  see  us  pass.  Yet  in  one 
respect  at  least  even  these  denizens  of  the  wilderness  were  superior  to 
their  Haitian  prototypes  —  they  really  spoke  their  native  language. 
Familiar  as  we  had  both  been  for  years  with  French,  it  was  rare  indeed 
that  we  got  more  than  the  general  drift  of  a  conversation  in  Haitian 
"  creole."  The  most  uneducated  dominicano,  on  the  other  hand,  spoke 
a  Spanish  almost  as  clear  and  precise  as  that  heard  in  the  streets  of 
Madrid.  There  must  be  something  enduring,  something  that  appeals 
to  the  most  uncouth  tongue,  in  the  Castilian  language.  Hear  it  where 
you  will,  in  all  the  broad  expanse  of  Central  and  South  America,  in 
the  former  Spanish  colonies  of  the  West  Indies,  from  the  lips  of 
Indians,  negroes,  mestizos,  or  the  Jews  of  the  Near  East,  banished  from 
Spain  centuries  ago,  with  minor  variations  of  pronunciation  and  enrich- 
ing of  vocabulary  from  the  tongues  it  has  supplanted,  it  retains  almost 
its  original  purity.  What  a  hybrid  of  incomprehensible  noises  French, 
on  the  other  hand,  becomes  in  the  mouths  of  slaves  and  savages  we  had 
all  too  often  had  impressed  upon  us  in  Haiti,  and  were  due  to  have  the 
lesson  repeated  in  the  French  islands  of  the  Lesser  Antilles.  Even  our 
own  English  cannot  stand  the  wear  and  tear  of  isolation  and  slovenly 
vocal  processes  with  anything  like  the  success  of  the  Castilian.  The 
speech  of  Canada  and  of  Barbados,  closely  as  those  two  lands  are 
linked  to  the  same  mother  country,  seem  almost  two  distinct  languages. 
But  if  the  Dominicans  spoke  their  language  more  purely,  their  voices 
had  none  of  the  soft,  almost  musical  tones  of  the  negroes  beyond  the 
Massacre.  There  was  a  brittle,  metallic,  nerve- jarring  twang  to  their 
speech  that  was  almost  as  unpleasant  as  the  high-pitched  chatter  of 
Cuban  women. 

If  we  noted  all  these  differences  between  the  two  divisions  of  the 
island,  there  was  another  that  impressed  us  far  more  forcibly  at  the 
moment.  In  all  our  jolting  over  the  roads  of  Haiti,  good,  bad,  and 
unspeakable,  we  had  never  once  been  delayed  by  so  much  as  a  puncture. 
In  the  first  mile  out  of  Dajabon  we  were  favored  with  four  separate 
and  distinct  blow-outs.  The  twenty-eight  miles  between  the  frontier 
and  Monte  Cristi  —  for  it  is  best  to  hear  the  worst  at  once  —  netted 
no  fewer  than  ten! 

It  was  shortly  after  the  fifth,  if  my  memory  is  not  failing,  that  the 
open  plain  gave  way  to  a  thorn-bristling  wilderness  through  which  had 
been  cut  a  roadway  a  generous  twenty  feet  wide  —  shortly  after  cer- 


192  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

tainly,  otherwise  the  sixth  blow-out  would  have  intervened.  I  use 
the  term  roadway  advisedly,  for  road  there  was  really  none.  The 
Dominican  scorns  the  building  of  highways  as  thoroughly  as  do  any 
of  his  cousins  of  Spanish  descent.  With  American  intervention  he 
was  forced,  much  against  his  will  and  better  judgment,  to  divert  a 
certain  amount  of  public  moneys  and  labor  to  making  wheeled  com- 
munication between  his  various  provinces  possible.  But  though  you 
can  drive  an  unbridled  horse  along  any  open  space,  you  cannot  choose 
the  path  he  shall  make  within  it.  Wide  as  it  was,  the  roadway  was 
an  unbroken  expanse  of  deeply  cracked  and  thoroughly  churned  brown 
mud,  sun-burned  to  the  consistency  of  broken  rock.  Along  this  the  first 
traveler  after  the  long  forgotten  rains  had  squirmed  and  waded  his 
way  where  the  mud  was  shallowest,  with  the  result  that  the  only 
semblance  to  a  road  wandered  back  and  forth  across  the  misshapen 
roadway  like  a  Spanish  "  river  "  in  its  ludicrously  over-ample  bed. 

Here  and  there  we  were  forced  to  crawl  along  the  extreme  edge  of 
one  or  the  other  of  the  bristling  walls  of  vegetation ;  frequently  the 
only  passable  trail  left  the  roadway  entirely  and  squirmed  off  through 
the  spiny  forest,  the  thorny  branches  whipping  us  in  the  faces.  Huge 
clumps  of  organ  cactus  and  others  of  the  same  family  forced  us  to 
make  precarious  detours.  At  the  top  of  a  faint  rise  we  sighted  the 
"  Morro  "  of  Monte  Cristi,  a  great  bulking  rectangular  hill  that  guides 
the  mariner  both  by  land  and  sea  to  the  most  western  port  of  Santo 
Domingo.  Our  hopes  began  slowly  to  revive  when  —  "  Groughung !  " 
the  sixth  mishap  befell  us  —  or  was  it  the  seventh?  I  remember  that 
the  eighth  overtook  us  at  the  bottom  of  the  rise,  when  both  daylight 
and  our  patches  were  giving  out.  The  ninth  found  us  in  total  dark- 
ness, and  disclosed  the  fact  that  there  was  not  a  match  on  board.  The 
lamps  of  the  car  had  ceased  to  function  months  before;  one  does  not 
Ford  it  by  night  in  the  island  of  Santo  Domingo  except  upon  extreme 
provocation.  A  hut  discovered  back  in  the  bush  was  likewise  match- 
less, but  the  supper  fire  on  the  ground  beside  it  still  had  a  few  glowing 
embers.  While  Rachel  held  the  blaze  of  one  of  those  dried  hollow  reeds 
that  do  duty  as  torches  in  Santo  Domingo  as  near  us  as  was  prudent, 
we  improvised  a  patch  that  would  have  caused  an  experienced  chauffeur 
to  gasp  with  astonishment.  Each  rustling  of  the  thorny  brush  about 
us  drew  our  fixed  attention.  There  are  bandits  in  Santo  Domingo  as 
well  as  in  Haiti,  and  they  have  far  less  reputation  for  making  speed  to 
the  rear.  The  captain  carried  a  revolver,  an  American  Marine  being 
equally  at  home  in  either  of  the  island  republics.  But  the  danger  of 


THE  LAND  OF  BULLET-HOLES  193 

international  complications  had  prevented  his  black  gendarme  assistant 
from  bringing  with  him  the  rifle  that  might  be  badly  needed.  My 
visions  of  losing  a  congenial  companion  were  vastly  enhanced  once 
when  a  crashing  in  the  bushes  caused  us  to  whirl  about  on  the  defensive. 
A  stray  cow  ambled  past  us  and  away  into  the  black  night. 

With  the  tenth  mishap,  lightless  and  patchless,  we  lost  the  final 
remnants  of  patience  and  forced  our  sorry  steed  to  hobble  along  on 
three  feet.  The  road  had  a  pleasant  little  way  of  eluding  us  when  least 
expected,  and  a  dozen  times  within  the  next  hour  we  brought  up 
against  the  forest  wall,  finding  our  way  again  only  by  the  sense  of 
touch.  Then  at  last  appeared  a  flicker  of  light.  But  it  was  only  the 
hamlet  on  the  bank  of  the  River  Yaque,  across  which  we  must  be 
ferried  on  what  looked  in  the  darkness  like  the  top  of  a  soap-box. 
Fortunately  it  takes  little  to  float  a  Ford.  Our  crippled  charger  stag- 
gered up  the  steep  bank  beyond  this  principal  stream  of  northern 
Santo  Domingo,  and  a  half  hour  later  we  rattled  into  the  considerable 
town  of  Monte  Cristi. 

Its  streets  were  as  wide  as  the  hilltop  roadway  behind  us,  but  like  it 
they  had  only  reached  the  first  stage  of  development.  Worst  of  all 
we  were  forced  to  run  the  full  length  of  nearly  every  one  of  them  in 
the  vain  quest  of  some  suggestion  of  hostelry.  Our  predicament  would 
have  been  one  to  bring  salt  tears  to  the  most  hardened  eyes  but  for 
the  saving  grace  of  all  the  island  of  Santo  Domingo  —  our  own  people 
in  uniform.  Barely  had  we  discovered  the  commander-in-chief  of 
Monte  Cristi,  a  Marine  captain  bearing  the  name  of  one  of  our  early 
and  illustrious  Presidents,  than  he  broke  all  records  in  hospitality  within 
our  own  experience  by  turning  his  entire  house  over  to  us.  We  were 
never  more  firmly  convinced  of  the  wisdom  of  American  intervention 
in  Santo  Domingo  than  at  the  end  of  that  explosive  day. 

The  otherwise  dark  and  deserted  town  was  gathered  in  its  best 
starched  attire  in  the  place  where  any  Spanish-American  town  would 
naturally  be  on  a  Sunday  evening  —  in  the  central  plaza.  This,  to 
begin  with,  was  strikingly  unlike  the  bare  open  squares  of  Haiti, 
with  their  unfailing  tribune-and-palm-tree  "  patrie."  First  of  all,  it 
was  well  paved,  an  assertion  that  could  not  be  made  of  any  other  spot 
in  town.  An  elaborate  iron  fence  surrounded  it,  comfortable  benches 
were  ranged  about  it,  trees  and  flowering  shrubs  shaded  it  by  day  and 
decorated  it  by  night,  the  only  public  lights  in  town  cast  an  unwonted 
brilliancy  upon  the  promenading  populace,  circling  slowly  round  and 


194          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

round  the  square,  the  two  sexes  in  opposite  directions,  their  voices 
and  footsteps  half  drowning  the  not  too  successful  efforts  of  a  group 
of  misfitted  males  in  the  center  of  the  plaza  to  produce  musical  sounds. 
It  was  as  typically  Spanish  a  scene  as  the  deserted  barren  place,  with 
the  weird  beating  of  tomtoms  floating  across  it,  is  indigenous  to  the 
republic  of  Haiti. 

It  was  not  until  morning,  however,  .that  we  caught  full  sight  of  the 
chief  feature  of  the  plaza  and  the  pride  of  Monte  Cristi.  By  daylight 
a  monument  we  had  only  vaguely  sensed  in  the  night  stood  forth  in  all 
its  dubious  beauty.  In  the  center  of  the  now  deserted  plaza  rose  a  near 
replica  of  the  Eiffel  Tower,  its  open-work  steel  frame  crowned  by  a 
large  four-faced  clock  some  fifty  feet  above  our  dizzy  heads.  Well 
might  the  Monte  Cristians  pride  themselves  on  a  feature  quite  unique 
among  the  plazas  of  the  world. 

From  this  clock  tower  hangs  a  tale  that  is  too  suggestive  of  Dominican 
character  to  be  passed  over  in  silence.  Some  years  ago,  before  the 
intrusive  Americans  came  to  put  an  end  to  the  national  sport,  a  candi- 
date for  the  Dominican  Congress  came  parading  his  candidacy  about 
the  far  corners  of  the  country.  In  each  town  he  promised,  in  return 
for  their  aid  in  seating  him  in  the  august  assembly,  that  the  citizens 
should  have  federal  funds  for  whatever  was  most  lacking  to  their  civic 
happiness.  Monte  Cristi,  being  farthest  from  the  cynical  capital  of 
any  community  in  Santo  Domingo,  took  the  politician  seriously.  The 
town  put  its  curly  heads  together  and  decided  that  what  it  most  wanted 
was  —  not  a  real  school  building  to  take  the  place  of  the  rented  hut 
in  which  its  children  fail  to  learn  the  rudiments  of  the  three  R's,  nor 
yet  pavements  for  some  of  the  sandhills  that  are  disguised  under  the 
name  of  streets.  What  it  felt  the  need  of  more  than  anything  else  was 
a  town  clock  that  would  cast  envy  on  all  its  rivals  for  many  miles 
around.  The  politician  approved  the  choice  so  thoroughly  that  he  ad- 
vised the  opening  of  negotiations  for  its  purchase  at  once,  without 
waiting  for  the  mere  formality  of  congressional  sanction.  In  due 
time  the  monstrosity  was  erected.  But  for  some  reason  the  newly 
elected  congressman's  influence  with  his  fellow-members  was  not  so 
paramount  as  his  faithful  supporters  had  been  led  to  believe.  Some 
of  them  still  contend  that  he  did  actually  introduce  a  resolution  to  pro- 
vide the  noble  and  patriotic  pueblo  of  Monte  Cristi  with  a  prime  neces- 
sity in  the  shape  of  a  community  time-piece ;  if  so  the  bill  died  in  com- 
mittee, unattended  by  priest  or  physician.  For  months  Monte  Cristi 
bombarded  the  far-off  capital  with  doleful  petitions,  until  at  length, 


THE  LAND  OF  BULLET-HOLES  195 

with  the  sudden  coming  of  the  Americans,  congress  itself  succumbed, 
and  the  two  thousand  or  so  good  citizens  of  the  hapless  town  found 
themselves  face  to  face  with  a  document  —  bearing  a  foreign  place  of 
issue  at  that,  caramba !  —  reading  succinctly : 

"To  one  clock  and  tower,  Dr $16,000 

Please  Remit" 

To  cap  the  climax,  the  ridiculous  Americans  who  had  taken  in  charge 
the  revenues  of  the  country  brought  with  them  the  absurd  doctrine  that 
municipalities  should  pay  their  bills.  Years  have  passed  since  the 
successful  politician  visited  the  northwest  corner  of  the  country,  yet 
Monte  Cristi  is  only  beginning  to  crawl  from  beneath  its  appalling 
clock  tower,  financially  speaking,  and  to  catch  its  breath  again  after 
relief  from  so  oppressive  a  burden.  Small  wonder  that  her  sand-hill 
streets  are  unpaved  and  that  her  children  still  crowd  into  a  rented  hovel 
to  glean  the  rudiments  of  learning. 

But  the  history  of  the  famous  clock  tower  does  not  end  there.  Those 
who  glance  at  the  top-heavy  structure  from  the  south  are  struck  by  a 
jagged  hole  just  above  the  face  of  the  dial,  midway  between  the  XII 
and  the  I.  It  is  so  obviously  a  bullet-hole  that  the  observer  could  not 
fail  to  show  surprise  were  it  not  that  bullet-holes  are  as  universal  in 
Santo  Domingo  as  fighting  cocks.  Thereby  hangs  another  tale. 

In  the  early  days  of  American  occupation  the  choice  of  commanders 
of  the  Guardia  Nacional  detachment  in  Monte  Cristi  was  not  always 
happy.  It  was  natural,  too,  that  a  group  of  marine  officers,  bubbling 
over  with  youth,  sentenced  to  pass  month  after  month  in  a  somnolent 
Dominican  village,  should  have  found  it  difficult  to  devise  fitting 
amusement  for  their  long  leisure  hours.  Pastimes  naturally  reduced 
themselves  to  the  exchange  of  poker  chips  and  the  consumption  of 
certain  beverages  supposedly  taboo  in  all  American  circles  and  doubly 
so  in  the  Marine  Corps.  The  power  of  Dominican  joy-water  to  pro- 
duce hilarity  is  far-famed.  It  came  to  be  the  custom  of  the  winning 
card  player  to  express  his  exuberance  by  drawing  his  automatic  and 
firing  several  shots  over  his  head.  This  means  of  expression  would 
have  been  startling  enough  to  the  disarmed  Dominicans  had  the  games 
been  played  in  the  open  air  with  the  sun  above  the  horizon.  But  the 
rendezvous  was  naturally  within  doors,  usually  in  the  dwelling  of  the 
commander,  and  the  climax  was  commonly  reached  at  an  hour  when 
all  reputable  natives  were  wrapped  in  slumber.  The  sheet-iron  roof 
that  sheltered  us  during  our  night  in  Monte  Cristi  corroborated  the 


196  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

testimony  of  the  inhabitants  that  they  had  frequently  sprung  from 
their  beds  convinced  that  yet  another  revolution  was  upon  them. 

One  night  a  difference  of  opinion  arose  among  the  players  as  to  the 
hour  that  should  be  set  for  the  cashing  in  of  chips.  The  commander 
offered  to  settle  the  problem  in  an  equitable  manner.  Stepping  to  the 
door,  he  raised  his  automatic  toward  the  famous  $16,000  clock  and 
fired.  The  decision  was  made ;  the  game  ended  at  twelve :  thirty.  It 
is  not  particularly  strange  under  the  circumstances  that  the  inhabitants 
of  Monte  Cristi  are  not  extraordinarily  fond  of  Americans  or  of 
marine  occupation. 

The  mail  coach  —  in  real  life  the  inevitable  Ford  —  left  Monte  Cristi 
the  morning  after  our  arrival,  obviating  the  necessity  of  wiring  to 
Santiago  for  a  private  car.  The  fare  was  within  reason,  as  such  things 
go  in  the  West  Indies  —  sixteen  dollars  for  a  journey  of  some  eighty 
miles  —  and  despite  the  pessimistic  prophecies  of  our  host  we  had 
the  back  seat  to  ourselves  the  entire  distance.  Our  driver,  of  dull- 
brown  hue,  was  of  the  same  quick,  nervous  temperament  as  his  Cuban 
cousins,  and  scurried  away  at  thirty  miles  an  hour  over  "  roads  "  which 
few  American  chauffeurs  would  venture  along  at  ten.  Yet  he  was  sur- 
prisingly successful  in  avoiding  undue  jolts;  so  often  had  he  driven 
this  incredibly  rough-and-tumble  route  that  he  knew  exactly  when  and 
where  to  slow  up  for  each  dry  arroyo,  to  dodge  protruding  boulders  or 
dangerous  sand  beds,  to  drop  from  one  level  to  another  without  crack- 
ing a  spring  or  an  axle.  The  machine  was  innocent  of  muffler,  hence  it 
needed  no  horn,  and  as  an  official  conveyance  it  yielded  the  road  to  no 
one,  except  the  few  placid  carts  whose  safety  lay  in  their  massiveness. 

Many  miles  of  the  journey  were  sandy  barren  wastes  producing  only 
dismal  thorn-bristling  dwarf  forests.  Every  now  and  then  we  dodged 
from  one  wide  caricature  of  a  road  to  another  still  more  choppy  and 
rock-strewn ;  occasionally  we  found  a  mile  or  two  of  tolerable  highway. 
The  scarcity  of  travelers  was  in  striking  contrast  to  Haiti.  The  few 
people  we  met  were  never  on  foot,  but  in  clumsy  carts  or  astride  gaunt, 
but  hardy,  little  horses.  Houses  of  woven  palm-leaves,  on  bare,  reddish, 
hard  soil  sheltered  the  poorer  inhabitants;  the  better-to-do  built  their 
dwellings  of  split  palm  trunks  that  had  the  appearance  of  clapboards. 
Villages  were  rare,  and  isolated  houses  wholly  lacking.  Outdoor  mud 
ovens  on  stilts,  with  rude  thatched  roofs  over  them,  adorned  nearly 
every  back  or  side  yard.  At  each  village  we  halted  before  a  roughly 
constructed  post  office  to  exchange  mailbags  with  a  postmaster  who  in 


THE  LAND  OF  BULLET-HOLES  197 

the  majority  of  cases  showed  no  visible  negro  strain.  Pure  white  in- 
habitants were  frequent  in  the  larger  pueblos;  full-blooded  African 
types  extremely  rare.  Santo  Domingo  has  been  called  a  mulatto  coun- 
try; we  found  it  more  nearly  a  land  of  quadroons. 

What  even  the  sparse  population  lived  on  was  not  apparent,  for 
almost  nowhere  were  people  working  in  the  fields,  and  the  towns  seemed 
to  be  chiefly  inhabited  by  fairly  well-dressed  loafers,  or  at  best  by 
lolling  shop-keepers.  Probably  they  existed  by  selling  things  to  one 
another.  The  stocks  of  the  over-numerous  shops  were  amply  supplied 
with  bottled  goods,  but  with  comparatively  little  else,  and  that  chiefly 
tinned  -food  from  the  United  States.  No  old  sugar  kettles,  no  ruined 
French  estates,  no  negro  women  in  broad  straw  hats  or  slippers  flap- 
ping writh  the  gait  of  their  donkeys,  no  improvised  markets  or  clamoring 
beggars  along  the  way  —  none  of  the  familiar  things  of  Haiti  were  in 
evidence,  except  the  fighting  cocks.  Such  horsemen  as  we  passed 
rode  in  well  upholstered  saddles,  doubly  softened  by  the  Spanish-Ameri- 
can pellon,  or  shaggy  saddle  rug.  The  -women  accompanying  them 
clung  uncomfortably  to  clumsy  side-saddles,  and  were  dressed  in  far 
more  style  than  their  Haitian  prototypes,  pink  gowns  being  most  in 
favor,  and  in  place  of  the  loose  slippers  the  majority  wore  shoes 
elaborate  enough  to  satisfy  a  New  York  shop-girl.  Cemeteries  at  the 
edge  of  each  town  were  forests  of  wooden  crosses,  contrasting  with  the 
coffin-shaped  cement  tombs  of  Haiti. 

Guayovin,  a  town  of  considerable  size  and  noted  for  its  revolutionary 
history,  the  scattered  hamlet  of  Laguna  Salada,  the  larger  village  of 
Esperanza,  one  pueblo  after  another  was  the  same  blurred  vista  of 
wide,  sandy  streets,  of  open  shop  fronts  and  gaping  inhabitants.  We 
soon  detected  a  surly  attitude  toward  Americans,  a  sullen,  passive 
resentment  that  recalled  the  attitude  of  Colombia  as  I  had  known  it 
eight  years  before.  There  was  more  superficial  courtesy  than  in  our 
own  brusk  and  hurried  land ;  the  Dominican,  like  all  our  neighbors  to 
the  southward,  cultivates  an  exterior  polish.  But  with  the  exception 
of  a  few  who  went  out  of  their  way  to  demonstrate  their  pro-American 
sentiments,  to  express  themselves  as  far  more  pleased  with  foreign 
occupation  than  with  the  continual  threat  of  revolution,  the  attitude 
of  silent  protest  was  everywhere  in  the  air. 

At  the  end  of  fifty  kilometers,  in  which  we  had  forded  only  one 
pathetic  little  stream,  the  landscape  changed  somewhat  for  the  better, 
though  at  the  same  time  the  "  road  "  became  even  more  atrocious 
Hitherto  the  only  beauty  in  the  scene  had  been  a  pretty  little  flowering 


198          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

cactus  bush,  like  an  inverted  candelabra,  and  the  soft  velvety  colors  of 
the  barren  brown  vistas.  Now  the  thorny  vegetation,  the  chaparral, 
and  the  cactus  gave  way  to  clumps  of  bamboo,  to  towering  palms,  and 
other  trees  of  full  stature,  while  corn  and  beans  began  to  clothe  the  still 
deadly-dry  soil.  High  hills  had  arisen  close  on  the  left,  higher  ones 
farther  off  to  the  right;  then  ahead  appeared  beautiful  labyrinths  of 
deep-blue  mountains,  range  after  range  piled  up  one  behind  the  other 
in  amphitheatrical  formation,  culminating  in  the  cloud-coiffed  peak  of 
Tino,  some  ten  thousand  feet  above  the  sea  and  the  highest  point  in 
the  West  Indies. 

,  Navarrete,  strung  along  the  beginning  of  an  excellent  highway  that 
was  to  continue,  except  for  two  unfinished  bridges,  to  Santiago,  boasted 
real  houses,  some  of  palm  trunks,  most  of  them  of  genuine  lumber  with 
more  corrugated  iron  than  thatched  roofs,  some  of  their  walls  of  faded 
pink,  green,  or  yellow,  many  of  them  frankly  unpainted.  A  consider- 
able commercial  activity  occupied  its  inhabitants.  Beyond,  the  country 
grew  still  greener,  with  groves  of  royal  palms  waving  their  ostrich 
plumes  with  the  dignified  leisureliness  of  the  tropics,  and  the  highway 
began  to  undulate,  or,  as  it  seemed  to  us  behind  our  over-eager  chauf- 
feur, to  pitch  and  roll,  over  low  foot-hills.  We  picked  up  a  rusty 
little  railroad  on  the  left,  farther  on  a  power  line  and  a  dozen  tele- 
graph wires  striding  over  hill  and  dale,  raced  at  illegal  speed  through 
Villa  Gonzalez,  and  entered  a  still  more  verdant  region  of  vegetable 
gardens  in  fertile  black  soil.  Then  all  at  once  we  topped  a  rise  from 
which  spread  out  all  the  splendid  green  valley  of  Yaque,  Santiago  de 
los  Caballeros  piled  up  a  sloping  high  ground  a  couple  of  miles  away, 
with  mountains  that  had  grown  to  imposing  height  still  far  distant  to  the 
right.  A  truck-load  of  marines,  monopolizing  the  right  of  way  in 
the  innocently  obstructive  manner  we  had  often  seen  in  France,  blocked 
our  progress  for  a  time;  then  we  swung  past  the  inevitable  shaded 
plaza  of  all  Spanish-American  towns,  and  drew  up  with  a  snort  at  the 
Santiago  post  office  just  as  the  cathedral  clock  was  striking  the  hour 
of  three. 

Before  we  had  time  even  to  set  foot  in  Santiago  we  were  greeted  by 
my  old  friend  "  Lieutenant  Long  "  of  Canal  Zone  police  fame,  who  had 
already  put  the  town  in  a  proper  mood  for  our  reception.  Since  the 
days  when  we  had  pursued  felons  together  along  the  ten-mile  strip  of 
Panamanian  jungle  the  erstwhile  lieutenant,  now  more  fittingly  known 
as  "•'  Big  George,"  had  added  steadily  to  his  laurels  as  a  good  and  true 


THE  LAND  OF  BULLET-HOLES  199 

servant  of  mankind.  From  the  defelonized  banks  of  the  canal  to  the 
command  of  the  sleuths  of  Porto  Rico  had  been  a  natural  step,  and 
when  he  had  detected  everything  worth  detecting  in  our  West  Indian 
isle,  and  fathered  a  company  of  the  i/th  Infantry  during  the  late  inter- 
national misunderstanding,  "  Big  George  "  accepted  the  Augean  task  of 
initiating  the  Dominicans  into  the  mysteries  of  their  new  American- 
sired  land  tax. 

Considerably  more  than  four  hundred  years  ago,  when  the  redskin 
north  of  the  Rio  Grande  had  yet  to  scalp  his  initial  pale  face,  there 
was  founded  in  the  fertile  valley  of  the  Yaque  the  first  of  the  many 
Santiagos  that  to-day  dot  the  map  of  more  than  half  the  western 
hemisphere.  Thirty  Spanish  gentlemen,  as  the  word  was  understood 
in  those  roistering  days,  hidalgos  who  had  followed  on  the  heels  of 
Columbus,  were  the  original  settlers,  and  because  of  their  noble  birth 
they  were  permitted  by  royal  decree  to  call  their  new  home  by  the  name 
it  still  officially  bears,  —  Santiago  de  los  Caballeros.  Although  the 
present  inhabitants  of  the  aristocratic  old  town  by  no  means  all  boast 
themselves  "  gentlemen "  either  in  the  conquistador  or  the  modern 
sense  of  the  term,  some  of  the  leading  families  can  trace  their  ancestry 
in  unbroken  line  from  those  old  Spanish  hidalgos.  Many  of  these  de- 
scendants of  fifteenth  century  grandees  still  retain  the  armor,  swords, 
and  other  quaint  warlike  gear  of  their  ancestors.  A  few  have  even 
kept  their  Caucasian  blood  pure  through  all  the  generations  and  fre- 
quent disasters  of  that  long  four  hundred  years,  but  the  vast  majority 
of  them  give  greater  or  less  evidence  of  African  graftings  on  the  family 
tree.  The  Cibao,  as  the  northern  half  of  Santo  Domingo  is  called, 
is  the  region  in  which  the  Spaniards  first  found  in  any  quantity  the 
gold  they  came  a-seeking,  and  gentlemanly  Santiago  has  ever  been  its 
principal  city.  Twice  destroyed  by  earthquakes,  like  so  many  cities 
of  the  West  Indies,  sacked  by  pirates  and  invaders  more  times  than  it 
cares  to  remember,  if  has  persisted  through  all  its  mishaps. 

But  in  spite  of  its  flying  start  Santiago  has  by  no  means  kept  pace 
with  many  a  parvenu  in  the  New  Wrorld.  Barely  can  it  muster  twenty 
thousand  inhabitants,  and  in  progress  and  industry  it  has  drifted  but 
slowly  down  the  stream  of  time.  Revolutions  have  been  its  chief  set- 
back, for  the  innumerable  civil  wars  that  have  decimated  the  population 
of  the  republic  ever  since  it  asserted  its  freedom  from  the  Spanish 
crown  have  almost  invariably  centered  about  the  city  of  caballeros.  A 
hundred  Spanish-American  towns  can  duplicate  its  every  feature. 
About  the  invariable  central  plaza,  with  its  shaded  benches,  diagonal 


200          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

walks,  and  evening  promenaders,  stand  the  bulking,  weather-peeled 
cathedral  with  its  constantly  thumping,  tin-voiced  bells,  the  casa  con- 
sistorial  where  the  municipal  council  dawdles  through  its  weekly  meet- 
ings, the  wide  open  yet  exclusive  clubs,  and  the  residences  of  the  most 
ancient  families,  their  lower  stories  occupied  by  shops  and  cafes.  In 
contrast  to  this  proudly  kept  square  the  wide,  right-angled  streets  that 
radiate  from  it  are  either  congenitally  innocent  of  paving  or  littered 
with  the  remnants  of  what  may  long  ago  have  been  cobbled  driveways. 
As  in  all  Spanish-America  the  lack  of  civic  team-work  is  shown  in  the 
sidewalks ;  which  are  high,  low,  ludicrously  narrow,  or  lacking  entirely, 
according  to  the  personal  whim  of  each  householder,  and  rather  family 
porches  than  public  rights  of  way.  Its  houses,  mostly  of  one  story, 
never  higher  than  two,  are  something  more  than  half  of  wood,  the 
remainder  being  adobe  or  baked-mud  structures  that  some  time  in  the 
remote  past  had  their  fagades  daubed  with  whitewash  or  scantily  painted 
in  various  bright  colors.  The  cathedral,  the  municipal  building,  many 
a  private  residence,  our  very  hotel  room  were  speckled  with  bullet-holes 
more  or  less  diligently  patched,  corroborating  the  verbal  evidence  of 
Santiago's  revolutionary  activities.  There  is  a  faint  reminder  of  the 
Moors  in  the  tendency  for  each  trade  to  monopolize  one  street  to  the 
exclusion  of  the  others.  A  dozen  barbershops  may  be  found  in  a  single 
block,  cafes  cluster  together,  drygoods  shops  with  their  languid  male 
clerks  shoulder  one  another  with  a  certain  degree  of  leisurely,  un- 
individualistic  aggressiveness.  Farther  out,  the  unkempt  streets 
dwindle  away  between  lop-shouldered  little  huts  that  seem  to  need  the 
supporting  mutual  assistance  shared  by  their  neighbors  nearer  the  center 
of  town. 

There  is  not  a  street  car  in  all  the  island  of  Santo  Domingo,  or  Haiti, 
as  you  choose  to  call  it.  Dingy,  wretched  old  carriages,  their  horses 
only  a  trifle  less  gaunt  and  ungroomed  than  those  of  Port  au  Prince, 
loiter  about  a  corner  of  the  plaza,  behind  the  cathedral,  shrieking  their 
pleas  at  every  possible  fare  who  passes  within  their  field  of  vision. 
Automobiles  are  not  unknown,  but  they  have  not  yet  invaded  Santiago 
in  force.  The  inevitable  venders  of  lottery  tickets,  which  in  Santo 
Domingo  are  of  municipal  rather  than  national  issue  and  resemble  the 
hand-bills  of  some  itinerant  family  of  barn-stormers,  pester  the  passer- 
by every  few  yards  with  spurious  promises  of  sudden  fortune.  In  the 
cathedral  the  visitor  finds  himself  face  to  face  at  every  step  with  ad- 
monitions that  women  must  have  their  heads  covered  and  that  worship- 
ers shall  not  spit  on  the  floor.  The  first  command  is  universally  recog- 


THE  LAND  OF  BULLET-HOLES  201 

nized,  if  only  by  the  spreading  of  a  handkerchief  over  the  frizzled 
tresses,  but  the  latter  is  by  no  means  so  faithfully  obeyed.  If  there  is 
anything  whatever  individualistic  about  St.  James  of  the  Gentlemen 
that  distinguishes  it  from  its  countless  cousins  below  the  Rio  Grande, 
it  is  the  stars  and  stripes  that  wave  above  the  ancient  fortress  overlook- 
ing the  placid  River  Yaque,  and  the  groups  of  American  marines  who 
come  now  and  then  striding  down  its  untended  streets. 

The  average  santiagueno  reaches  the  dignity  of  clothes  somewhat 
late  in  life.  Naked  black  or  brown  babies  adorn  every  block,  the  sight 
of  a  plump  boy  of  five  taking  his  constitutional  dressed  in  a  pair  of 
sandals,  a  bright  red  hat,  and  a  magnificent  expression  of  unconcern 
attracts  the  attention  of  no  one  except  strangers.  Girls  show  the 
prudery  of  their  sex  somewhat  earlier  in  life,  but  many  a  boy  learns 
to  smoke  cigarettes,  and  even  long  black  cigars,  before  he  submits  to 
the  inconvenience  of  his  first  garment.  It  may  be  this  sartorial  freedom 
of  his  earlier  life  that  makes  the  Santiago  male  prone  to  sport  a  costume 
that  belies  his  years.  Youths  of  sixteen,  eighteen,  and  some  one 
might  easily  suspect  of  being  twenty,  display  an  expanse  of  brown  legs 
between  their  tight  knee-breeches  and  short  socks  that  makes  their 
precocious  tendency  to  frequent  cafes,  consume  fiery  drinks  and  man- 
size  cigars,  and  enamorar  las  muchachas  doubly  striking.  They  are 
intelligent  youths,  on  the  whole,  compared  with  their  Haitian  neigh- 
bors, with  a  quick  wit  to  catch  a  political  argument  or  the  mysteries  of 
a  mechanical  contrivance,  though  they  have  the  tendency  of  all  their 
mixed  race  to  slow  down  in  their  mental  processes  soon  after  reaching 
what  with  us  would  be  early  manhood.  La  juventud  of  Santo  Domingo 
is  beginning  to  look  with  slightly  less  scorn  upon  the  use  of  the  hands 
as  a  means  of  livelihood,  an  improvement  which  may  be  largely  credited 
to  American  occupation,  not  so  much  through  precept  and  example  as 
by  the  reduction  in  political  sinecures  and  the  institution  of  genuine 
examinations  for  candidates  to  government  office. 

In  character,  as  in  physical  aspect,  Santiago  is  true  to  type.  The 
outward  forms  of  politeness  are  diligently  cultivated;  actual,  physical 
consideration  for  the  comfort  or  convenience  of  others  is  conspicuous 
by  its  scarcity.  The  same  man  who  raises  his  hat  to  and  shakes  hands 
with  his  neighbor  ten  times  a  day  shows  no  hesitancy  in  maintaining 
any  species  of  nuisance,  from  a  bevy  of  fighting  cocks  to  a  braying 
jackass,  against  the  peace  and  happiness  of  that  same  neighbor,  nor  in 
hugging  a  house-wall  when  it  is  his  place  to  take  to  the  gutter.  A 
haughtiness  of  demeanor,  an  over-developed  personal  pride  that  it 


202          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

would  be  difficult  to  find  real  reason  for,  burden  all  except  the  most 
poverty-stricken  class.  Amid  the  medley  of  tints  that  make  up  the 
population  the  casual  observer  might  conclude  that  the  existence  of  a 
color-line  would  be  out  of  the  question  in  Santiago.  As  he  dips  beneath 
the  surface,  however,  he  finds  a  very  decided  one,  nay,  several,  dividing 
the  population  not  into  two,  but  into  three  or  four  social  strata,  though 
the  lines  of  demarkation  are  neither  as  distinct  nor  as  adamant  as  with 
us.  Thus  one  of  the  tile-floored  clubs  on  the  central  plaza,  the  chair- 
forested  parlor  of  which  stands  ostensibly  wide  open,  admits  no  member 
whose  ancestry  has  not  been  unbrokenly  Caucasian,  while  another 
across  the  square  welcomes  neither  pure  whites  nor  full-blooded  Afri- 
cans. An  amusing  feature  of  this  club  exclusiveness  is  that  the  first 
society,  after  what  is  said  to  have  been  violent  debate,  declined  to  admit 
American  members,  as  a  protest  against  "  the  unwarranted  interference 
by  superior  force  in  our  national  affairs."  In  retaliation,  or  rather,  in 
supreme  indifference  to  this  attitude,  the  forces  of  occupation  have 
acquired  the  premises  next  door  and  take  no  back  seat  to  the  Dominicans 
in  the  matter  of  exclusiveness.  It  may  be  the  merest  coincidence  that 
whenever  a  dance  is  given  in  the  American  clubrooms  a  still  more  blatant 
orchestra,  seated  close  up  against  the  thin  partition  between  the  two 
social  rendezvous,  furnishes  the  inspiration  for  a  similar  recreation. 

The  principal  business  of  Santiago,  if  one  may  judge  by  the  frequent 
warehouse  doors  from  which  issues  the  acrid  smell  of  sweating  tobacco, 
is  the  buying  and  selling  of  the  narcotic  weed.  It  comes  in  great  bales, 
wrapped  in  yagua,  or  the  thick,  leathern  leaf-stem  of  the  royal  palm, 
of  which  each  tree  sheds  one  a  month  and  which  is  turned  to  such  a 
variety  of  uses  throughout  the  West  Indies.  Women  and  boys  are 
constantly  picking  these  bales  apart  and  strewing  their  contents  about 
in  various  heaps,  to  just  what  purpose  is  not  apparent  to  the  layman, 
for  they  always  end  by  bundling  them  up  again  in  the  self-same  yagua, 
in  which  dusky  draymen  carry  them  off  once  more  to  parts  unknown. 
A  considerable  amount  of  the  stuff  is  consumed  locally,  however,  for 
Santiago  boasts  one  large  cigar  factory  and  a  number  of  small  ones, 
ranging  down  to  one-room  hovels  in  which  the  daily  output  could  prob- 
ably be  contained  within  two  boxes  —  were  it  not  the  custom  in  Santo 
Domingo  simply  to  tie  them  in  bundles. 

The  smoker  must  conduct  himself  with  circumspection  in  American- 
governed  Santo  Domingo.  Each  and  every  cigar  is  wrapped  round 
not  only  with  the  usual  banded  trademark,  but  also  with  a  revenue 
stamp.  Now  beware  that  you  do  not  indulge  that  all  but  universal 


THE  LAND  OF  BULLET-HOLES  203 

American  habit  of  removing  the  band  before  lighting  the  cigar.  In 
Santo  Domingo  it  is  unlawful  to  withdraw  this  proof  of  legal  origin 
until  the  weed  has  been  "  partially  consumed,"  and  the  official  expert 
ruling  on  that  phrase  is  that  the  clipping  off  of  the  consumer's  end  does 
not  constitute  even  partial  consumption,  which  only  the  burning  of  a 
certain  portion  of  the,  customarily,  opposite  extremity,  accomplishes. 
Furthermore,  when  at  last  you  do  venture  to  remove  the  decoration,  do 
not  on  any  account  fail  to  mutilate  it  beyond  all  semblance  to  its  original 
state.  If  you  are  detected  in  the  perpetration  of  either  of  the  unlawful 
acts  above  specified,  no  power  can  save  you  from  falling  into  the  hands 
of  "  Mac,"  who  sits  in  the  same  office  with  "  Big  George  " —  whenever 
one  or  both  of  them  are  not  pursuing  similar  malefactors  in  another 
corner  of  the  Cibao — facing  the  charge  of  unlawfully,  wilfully,  and 
maliciously  violating  Article  12  of  the  Internal  Revenue  Law  of  the 
sovereign  Republica  Dominicana,  and  there  is  no  more  certain  road  to 
the  prisoner's  dock. 

But  I  am  getting  ahead  of  my  story.  "  Mac  "  will  make  his  official 
entry  all  in  due  season.  What  I  started  to  explain  was  why  one  may 
frequently  behold  an  elephantine  Dominican  market  woman,  often  with 
a  brood  of  piccanninies  half  concealed  in  the  folds  of  her  ample  skirt, 
parading  down  the  street  with  the  air  of  a  New  York  clubman  in 
spite  of  the  bushel  or  two  of  yams  or  plaintains  on  her  head,  puffing 
haughtily  at  a  cigar  the  band  of  which  falsely  suggests  that  she  has 
recently  squandered  a  dollar  bill  with  her  tobacconist.  Indeed,  many 
an  over-cautious  Dominican  avoids  all  possibility  of  falling  into  the 
net  by  smoking  serenely  on  through  band,  stamp,  and  all,  which,  to  tell 
the  truth,  does  not  particularly  depreciate  the  aroma  of  the  average 
native  cigar. 

There  is  sound  basis  for  Article  12.  In  the  good  old  days  when 
there  were  no  battalions  of  marines  to  interfere  with  the  national 
sport  of  Santo  Domingo  the  stamp  tax  was  already  in  force,  and  the 
consumption  of  cigars  was  almost  what  it  is  to-day;  yet  for  some 
occult  reason  it  scarcely  produced  a  tenth  of  its  present  revenue.  First 
of  all  there  were  the  "  chivo  "  cigars,  —  chivo  meaning  not  merely  goat 
but  something  corresponding  to  our  word  "  graft  "  in  the  Spanish  West 
Indies  —  which  never  made  any  pretense  of  bearing  a  stamp.  Some 
of  them  were  made  secretly;  a  veritable  pillar  of  the  social  structure 
of  Santo  Domingo  was  discovered  to  be  operating  a  clandestine  cigar- 
factory  long  after  the  Americans  took  up  this  particular  bit  of  the 
white  man's  burden.  Others  were  privately  placed  on  the  market  by 


204  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

legitimate  manufacturers,  who  supplied  a  certain  percentage  of  legal 
stock  also.  A  third  scheme  was  to  fill  the  pockets  of  the  native  in- 
spector with  a  choice  brand  and  advise  him  to  forget  the  matter;  still 
another  alternative  was  to  buy  the  stamps  at  a  bargain  from  some 
revenue  official  who  was  hard  pressed  for  ready  cash.  But  the  favorite 
means  of  avoiding  contributions  to  the  wily  politicians  in  the  capital 
was  simplicity  itself.  A  cigar-maker  purchased  a  hundred  revenue 
stamps  and  wrapped  them  about  his  first  hundred  cigars.  His  retailer, 
who  might  be  himself,  his  wife,  his  cousin,  or  at  least  his  compadre, 
greeted  the  purchaser  with  a  smiling  countenance.  "  Cigars  ?  Why 
certainly.  Try  these.  Como  va  la  senora  hoy?  Y  los  ninosf 
Curious  exhibition  that  fourth  pair  of  cocks  gave  on  Sunday,  verdadf" 
Bargains  are  not  struck  hastily  in  Santo  Domingo.  By  the  time  the 
transaction  was  completed  the  retailer  had  ample  opportunity  idly  to 
slip  the  bands  off  the  cigars  and  drop  them  into  his  counter  drawer. 
The  purchaser  made  no  protest,  even  if  he  noticed  the  manipulation, 
for  he  was  buying  cigars,  not  revenue  stamps.  It  is  vouched  for  that 
the  same  band  saw  continual  service  in  the  old  days  for  a  year  or  two. 
But  it  is  a  careless  smoker  to-day  who  ventures  to  thrust  a  cigar  into 
his  pocket  without  making  sure  that  its  proof  of  legality  is  intact. 

"  Big  George  "  arranged  that  we  should  spend  the  first  Sunday  after 
our  arrival  in  the  most  typical  Dominican  style  of  celebration,  —  the  par- 
taking of  lechon  asado.  His  choice  of  scene  for  the  celebration,  too,  was 
particularly  happy.  An  hour's  easy  jog  from  town  —  easy  because  the 
saddle-horses  of  Santo  Domingo,  like  those  of  Cuba,  are  all  "  gaited," 
that  is,  gifted  with  a  singlefoot  pace  that  makes  them  as  comfortable 
seats  as  any  rocking-chair  —  brought  us  to  the  estate  of  Jaragua,  the 
exact  site  of  the  first  founding  of  Santiago  by  the  Castilian  hidalgos.  It 
was  the  first  earthquake  that  caused  them  to  transfer  it  from  this  heart  of 
the  valley  to  the  bluff  overlooking  the  Yaque.  The  ruins  of  an  old  brick- 
and-stone  church,  of  a  water  reservoir  or  community  bath,  and  long 
lines  of  stones  embedded  in  the  ground  marking  the  remnants  of 
cobbled  streets  and  house  walls,  are  half  covered  with  the  brush  and 
jungle-grass  of  a  modern  hog  farm.  Magnificent  royal  palms  rise 
from  what  were  once  private  family  nooks ;  immense  tropical  trees 
spread  over  former  parlors  more  charming  roofs  than  their  original 
coverings  of  thatch ;  the  pigs  frequently  root  up  ancient  coins  that  may 
long  ago  have  jingled  in  Columbus'  own  pocket. 

Under  the  dense,  capacious  shade  of  a  fatherly  old  manero-tree  sat  a 


THE  LAND  OF  BULLET-HOLES  205 

negro  peon,  slowly  turning  round  and  round  over  a  fire  of  specially 
chosen,  aromatic  fagots  a  suckling  pig,  or  lechon,  spitted  on  a  long 
bamboo  pole.  In  the  outdoor  kitchen  of  the  rambling,  one-story,  tile- 
roofed,  delightful  old  Spanish  country  house  a  group  of  ebony  servants 
of  both  sexes  and  all  ages  were  preparing  a  dozen  other  native  dishes 
the  mere  aroma  of  which  made  a  hungry  man  withdraw  to  leeward  and 
await  the  summons  with  what  patience  he  could  muster.  Our  host  and 
his  family,  with  just  enough  African  tinge  to  their  ancestry  to  make 
their  hair  curl,  hurried  hither  and  yon,  striving  to  minister  to  our 
already  perfect  comfort.  There  is  no  more  genuine  hospitality  than 
that  of  the  higher  class  hacendados  of  rural  Latin-America,  once  they 
have  cast  aside  the  mixture  of  shyness  and  rather  oppressive  dignity  in 
which  they  commonly  wrap  themselves  before  strangers. 

In  due  leisurely  season  the  chief  victim  of  the  day's  feast,  his  ma- 
hogany skin  crackling  from  the  recent  ordeal,  bathed  in  his  own  tender 
juices,  was  slid  down  the  bamboo  pole  to  a  giant  platter  and  given  the 
place  of  honor  on  the  family  board.  Flanked  on  all  sides  by  the  results 
of  the  kitchen  industry,  —  heaping  plates  of  steamed  yuca,  mashed 
yams  bristling  with  native  peppers,  boiled  calabash,  plump  boniatos, 
golden  Spanish  chick-peas,  even  a  Brobdingnagian  beefsteak  —  and 
these  in  turn  by  the  now  thoroughly  congenial  hosts  and  guests,  a  bare- 
foot, wide-eyed  servant  behind  every  other  chair,  the  celebration  began. 
Spanish  wines  which  one  would  never  have  credited  with  finding  their 
way  to  this  far-off  corner  of  the  New  World  turned  the  big  bucolic 
tumblers  red  and  golden  in  perhaps  too  rapid  succession.  Dominican 
tales  of  the  olden  times,  American  pleasantries  reclothed  in  rattling 
Castilian,  reminiscences  of  Haitian  occupation  from  the  still  bright-eyed 
grandmother,  all  rose  in  a  babel  of  hilarity  that  floated  away  through 
the  immense  open  doorways  on  the  delightful  trade  winds  that  sweep 
constantly  over  the  West  Indies.  But  alas  for  the  brevity  of  human 
appetite !  Long  before  the  center  of  attraction  had  lost  his  resemblance 
to  the  eager  little  rooter  of  the  day  before,  while  the  Gargantuan  beef- 
steak still  sat  intact,  eyeing  the  circle  with  a  neglected  air,  one  after 
another  of  the  sated  convivialists  was  beckoning  away  with  a  scornful 
gesture  of  disinterest  the  candied  and  spiced  papaya  which  the  servants 
were  bent  on  setting  before  him.  What,  too,  shall  I  say  of  the  das- 
tardly conduct  of  "  Big  George?  "  For  with  his  help  the  lechon,  nay, 
even  the  neglected  beefsteak,  might  have  been  reduced  to  more  seemly 
proportions  before  they  were  abandoned  to  the  eager  fingers  of  the 
gleaming-toothed  denizens  of  the  kitchen.  The  painful  truth  is  that 


206  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

the  defelonizer  of  Porto  Rico,  the  erstwhile  dread  of  Canal  Zone  crim- 
inals, the  man  who  had  so  often  given  a  "  summary  "  to  a  hapless  mem- 
ber of  the  I7th  Infantry  for  being  a  moment  late  at  reveille,  was  absent 
without  leave.  Even  "  Mac,"  with  his  whole  family  of  little  Mackites, 
their  chubby  faces  giving  a  touch  of  old  Erin  to  this  Dominican  land- 
scape, had  arrived  on  the  scene  at  the  crucial  moment.  What  excuse, 
then,  can  one  fabricate  for  an  unhampered  bachelor  whose  seven- 
league  legs  might  have  covered  the  paltry  distance  between  new  and 
old  Santiago  in  a  twinkling,  yet  who  had  chosen  to  desert  his  bidden 
guests  in  the  heart  of  a  bandit-infested  island?  Can  even  poetic  license 
pardon  a  man,  particularly  a  man  who  dents  the  lintels  of  half  the  doors 
he  passes  through,  who  remains  at  home  to  write  sonnets  when  he 
might  be  partaking  of  lechon  asado?  Certainly  the  admission  of  such 
irrelevant  testimony  as  the  fact  that  the  horse  furnished  him  by  an 
unobserving  Dominican  was  not  capable  of  lifting  clear  of  the  ground 
the  seven-league  legs  already  stigmatized  cannot  rank  even  as  extenu- 
ating circumstances. 


CHAPTER  IX 

TRAVELS    IN    THE   CIBAO 

THERE  are  two  railroads  in  Santo  Domingo,  confined  to  the 
Cibao,  or  northern  half  of  the  Republic,  which  by  their  united 
efforts  connect  Santiago  with  the  sea  in  both  directions.  The 
more  diminutive  of  them  is  the  Ferrocarril  Central  Dominicano,  cov- 
ering the  hundred  kilometers  between  Moca  and  Puerto  Plata,  on  the 
north  coast,  with  the  ancient  city  of  the  Gentlemen  about  two  thirds 
of  the  way  inland.  It  is  government  owned,  but  takes  its  orders  from 
an  American  manager.  It  burns  soft  coal,  as  the  traveler  will  soon 
discover  to  his  regret,  and,  unlike  most  lines  south  of  the  Rio  Grande, 
it  has  only  one  class.  The  result  is  that  the  single  little  passenger  train 
which  makes  the  round  trip  three  times  a  week  and  keeps  the  Sabbath 
contains  a  motley  throng  of  voyagers.  I  say  "  contains  "  with  hesita- 
tion, for  that  is  somewhat  straining  the  truth.  The  bare  statement  that 
its  gauge  is  six  inches  short  of  a  yard  should  be  sufficient  hint  to  the 
imaginative  reader  to  indicate  the  disparity  between  travelers  and  cars. 
In  fact,  any  but  the  shortest  knees  are  prone  to  become  hopelessly 
entangled  with  those  of  one's  companion  or  in  the  rattan  seat-back 
ahead,  and  the  fully  developed  man  who  would  view  the  passing  land- 
scape must  needs  force  his  head  down  somewhere  near  the  pit  of  his 
stomach.  The  train  has  its  virtues,  however,  for  all  that.  The  more 
than  indefinite  periods  it  tarries  at  each  succeeding  station  give  the 
seeker  after  local  tolor  ample  opportunity  to  make  the  thorough 
acquaintance  of  every  town  and  its  inhabitants,  particularly  as  it  is  the 
custom  of  the  latter  to  gather  en  masse  along  the  platforms. 

We  made  up  a  party  of  four  for  the  journey.  "  Big  George,"  his 
sonnets  safely  despatched  to  his  clamoring  publisher,  was  sadly  needed 
to  stifle  a  feud  between  his  two  native  subordinates  in  the  northern  port : 
the  rumor  of  an  illicit  still  in  the  same  locality  had  been  enough  to  send 
"  Mac  "  racing  to  the  station.  We  wormed  our  way  into  one  of  the 
two  passenger  coaches  with  mixed  feelings.  For  Rachel  it  was  com- 
modious enough.  After  years  of  experience  with  the  cramped  and 
weak-jointed  furniture  of  Latin-America  I  should  naturally  not  be  so 

207 


208          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

lacking  in  foresight  as  to  choose  —  or  be  chosen  by  —  a  wife  who 
required  an  undue  amount  of  space.  "  Mac  "  and  I,  too,  had  been 
booted  about  this  celestial  footstool  long  enough  to  accept  a  certain  de- 
gree of  packing  without  protest.  But  if  "  Big  George  "  stuck  doggedly 
to  the  platform  and  gazed  pensively  along  the  roofs  of  the  cars  ahead  to 
where  the  wool-pated  fireman  and  engineer  were  struggling  to  contain 
themselves  within  the  same  cab,  it  was  not  for  the  sole  purpose  of 
gathering  inspiration  for  new  sonnets  from  the  fronds  of  the  passing 
palm  trees. 

However,  I  was  near  forgetting  to  bring  "  Mac  "  in  for  his  formal 
introduction,  and  there  is  no  better  time  to  redeem  my  promise  than 
while  we  are  tearing  along  at  eight  miles  an  hour  over  a  region  we 
have  already  viewed  by  Ford.  Top  sergeant  of  a  troop  of  American 
cavalry  that  won  laurels  in  the  Spanish-American  war,  he  had  chosen 
to  remain  behind  in  Porto  Rico  when  his  "  hitch  "  was  ended.  There 
he  helped  to  set  our  new  possession  to  rights  and  took  unto  himself 
the  foundation  of  a  family.  With  the  establishment  of  American 
control  of  customs  in  Santo  Domingo  in  1907  he  was  the  first  of  our 
fellow-countrymen  to  accept  the  dangerous  task  of  patrolling  the 
Haitian-Dominican  frontier.  Many  a  party  of  smugglers  did  he  rout 
single-handed;  times  without  number  he  was  surrounded  by  bandits, 
or  threatened  with  such  fate  as  only  the  outlaws  of  savage  Haiti  and 
their  Dominican  confederates  can  inflict  upon  helpless  white  men  falling 
into  their  hands.  "  Mac  "  made  it  his  business  never  to  be  helpless. 
His  trusty  rifle  lost  none  of  the  accuracy  it  had  learned  on  the  target- 
range;  the  tactics  of  self-preservation  and  the  will  to  command  he  had 
gained  in  his  long  military  schooling  stood  him  in  increasing  good 
stead.  Even  when  he  was  shot  from  ambush  and  marked  for  life 
with  two  great  spreading  scars  beneath  his  shirt,  he  did  not  lose  his 
soldierly  poise,  but  wreaked  a  memorable  vengeance  on  his  foes  before 
he  dragged  himself  back  to  safety.  *'  Mac  "  does  not  boast  of  these 
things;  indeed,  he  rarely  speaks  of  them,  except  as  a  background  of 
his  witty  stories  of  border  control  in  the  old  days.  But  his  colleagues 
of  those  merry  by-gone  times  still  tell  of  his  fearless  exploits. 

Beyond  Navarrete,  where  the  railroad  begins  to  part  company  with 
the  highway  from  the  west,  the  train  took  to  climbing  in  great  leisurely 
curves  higher  and  higher  into  the  northern  range  of  hills.  Royal  palms 
stood  like  markers  for  steep  vistas  of  denser,  but  less  lofty,  vegetation ; 
scattered  houses  of  simple  tropical  construction  squatting  here  and  there 
on  little  cleared  spaces  —  cleared  even  of  grass,  which  the  Spanish- 


TRAVELS  IN  THE  CIBAO  209 

American  seems  ever  to  abhor  —  broke  the  otherwise  green  and  full- 
wooded  landscape.  Worn  out  rails  did  duty  as  telegraph  poles;  the 
power  line  that  brings  Santiago  its  electric  light  from  Puerto  Plata 
smiled  at  our  pigmy  efforts  to  keep  up  with  it.  Higher  still  the  railway 
banks  were  lined  with  the  miserable  yagna  and  jungle-rubbish  shacks  of 
Haitian  squatters.  An  editorial  in  the  least  pathetic  of  Santiago's  daily 
handbills  masquerading  under  the  name  of  newspapers  had  protested 
the  very  day  before  against  this  "  constant  influx  of  undesirable  immi- 
gration." Indeed,  the  American  governor  had  recently  been  prevailed 
upon  to  issue  a  decree  tending  to  curtail  the  increase  in  this  sort  of 
population. 

Under  this  new  decree  all  natives  of  other  West  Indian  islands  resi- 
dent within  the  Dominican  Republic  must  register  within  four  months 
and  be  prepared  to  leave  if  their  presence  is  deemed  undesirable ;  those 
who  seek  admission  in  the  future  must  have  in  their  possession  at 
least  fifty  dollars.  "  Santo  Domingo  for  the  Dominicans "  is  the 
slogan  of  those  who  have  gained  the  governor's  ear.  If  they  are  to  have 
immigration,  let  it  be  Caucasian,  preferably  from  Latin  Europe.  This 
demand  sounds  well  enough  in  print,  but  is  sadly  out  of  gear  with  the 
facts.  The  Dominican  Republic  covers  two-thirds  of  the  ancient  is- 
land of  Quisqueya,  which  has  an  area  equal  to  that  of  Maine  or  Ire- 
land. Its  more  than  28,000  square  miles,  four  times  the  size  of  Con- 
necticut and  richer  in  undeveloped  resources  than  any  other  region  of 
the  West  Indies,  is  inhabited  by  a  population  scarcely  equal  to  that  of 
Buffalo.  Nearly  two-thirds  of  those  inhabitants  are  of  the  weaker 
sex;  moreover  a  large  percentage  of  the  males  are  too  proud  or  too 
labitually  fatigued  to  indulge  in  manual  labor,  which  is  the  most  cry- 
ing need  of  the  country.  Caucasian  settlers  would  cause  it  to  con- 
tribute its  fair  share  to  the  world's  bread-basket,  were  there  any  known 
means  of  attracting  them.  But  as  there  seems  to  be  none,  its  virgin 
fields  must  await  the  importation  of  labor  from  its  overcrowded  island 
icighbors,  particularly  from  that  land  of  half  its  size  and  three  times 
its  population  which  is  separated  from  it  only  by  a  knee-deep  frontier. 
Vet  what  Haitian  laborer  boasts  a  fortune  of  fifty  dollars?  A  black 
plutocrat  of  that  grade  would  remain  at  home  to  end  his  days  in  ease 
in  his  jungle  palace  or  finance  a  revolution.  The  Dominican  is  not 
unjustified  in  wishing  to  keep  his  land  free  from  the  semi-savage  hordes 
beyond  the  Massacre,  but  a  hungry  world  will  not  long  endure  the 
sight  of  one  of  its  richest  garden  spots  lying  virtually  fallow. 

Beyond  a  tunnel  at  the  summit  of  the  line,  1600  feet  above  the  sea, 


210          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

the  passengers  poured  pellmell  into  a  station  restaurant.  Its  long 
general  table  was  sagging  under  a  half-dozen  styles  of  meat  and  all 
the  known  native  vegetables  and  fruits.  But  woe  betide  the  traveler 
who  clung  to  the  dignity  of  good  breeding!  For  he  would  infallibly  be 
found  clamoring  in  vain  for  something  with  which  to  decorate  his  sec- 
ond plate  when  the  warning  screech  of  the  toy  locomotive  announced 
that  it  was  prepared  to  undertake  new  feats. 

The  Atlantic  slope  of  the  little  mountain  range  was  more  unbrokenly 
green  than  the  interior  valley  behind,  for  it  has  first  choice  of  the 
rains  that  sweep  in  from  the  northeast.  Coffee,  corn,  shaded  patches 
of  cacao,  and  the  giant  leaves  of  the  banana  clothed  the  steep  hillsides. 
Cattle  grazed  here  and  there  beneath  the  dense  foliage.  About  the 
Perez  sugar-mill  horn-yoked  oxen  butted  along  the  bottomless  roads 
massive  two-wheeled  carts  piled  high  with  cane.  Several  of  the  wiser 
passengers,  a  woman  or  two  among  them,  had  sought  more  commodious 
quarters  in  the  "  baggage  car  "  ahead,  an  open  box  car  in  which  one 
might  pick  a  steamer  chair  or  some  little  less  comfortable  seat  from  the 
luggage  piled  helterskelter  against  the  two  end  walls.  "  Big  George  " 
invaded  the  roof  above,  where  some  of  us  felt  impelled  to  follow,  lest 
his  sonnetical  abstraction  cause  him  to  be  left  hanging  from  the  tele- 
graph wire  that  sagged  low  across  the  line  at  frequent  intervals.  This 
free-and-easy,  take-care-of-yourself-because-we-don't-intend-to  manner 
of  operating  public  utilities  is  one  of  the  chief  charms  of  the  American 
tropics. 

At  La  Sabana,  with  its  majestic  ceiba  tree  framing  the  jumping-off 
place  ahead,  we  halted  to  change  engines.  The  ten  per  cent,  grade 
down  to  the  coast  had  led  to  the  recent  introduction  of  powerful  Shea 
locomotives  to  take  the  place  of  the  former  rack-rails  that  lay  in 
tumbled  heaps  along  the  edge  of  the  constantly  encroaching  vegetation. 
Wrecks  of  cars,  like  helpless  upturned  turtles,  rusting  away  beneath 
their  growing  shrouds  of  greenery  below  the  embankment  of  several 
sharp  curves,  suggested  why  the  change  had  been  made.  Trees  and 
bushes  completely  covered  with  ivy-like  growths  as  with  green  clothing 
hung  out  in  the  blazing  sunshine  to  dry  lined  the  way.  The  wide- 
spread view  of  the  foam-edged  coast  of  the  blue  Atlantic,  with  the  red 
roofs  of  Puerto  Plata  peering  through  the  trees,  shrank  and  faded  away 
as  we  reached  the  narrow  plain,  across  which  we  jolted  for  ten  minutes 
more  through  sugar,  mango,  and  banana-bearing  fields  before  the 
passengers  disentangled  themselves  on  the  edge  of  the  sea. 


TRAVELS  IN  THE  CIBAO  211 

The  port  was  somewhat  larger,  more  sanitary  and  more  enterprising 
than  we  had  expected.  Cacao,  sugar,  and  tobacco  were  being  run  on 
mule-drawn  hand-cars  out  to  a  waiting  steamer,  though,  strictly  speak- 
ing, the  open  roadstead  can  scarcely  be  called  a  harbor.  The  town  was 
pretty,  shaded  in  its  outer  portions  by  cocoanut  and  other  seaside 
tropical  trees,  and  with  all  the  usual  Spanish-American  features.  A 
church  completely  covered  with  sheet  iron  walled  one  side  of  the  de- 
lightful little  plaza,  about  which  were  the  customary  open  clubs,  one 
of  them  occupied  by  American  marines,  whose  rag-time  phonographs 
and  similar  pastimes  ladened  the  evening  breezes  more  than  all  the 
others.  The  cemetery  on  the  edge  of  the  sloping  hills  was  agreeably 
decorated  with  bushes  of  velvety,  dark  red  leaves,  but  I  remember  it 
rather  because  of  the  name  of  a  marine  sergeant  on  the  bulkhead  of 
one  of  those  curious  Spanish  rows  of  bureau-drawer  graves  set  into 
the  massive  outer  wall.  Strange  final  resting-place  of  an  American 
boy !  Nor  was  he  of  this  new  generation  of  "  leather-necks  "  that  has 
settled  down  to  make  Santo  Domingo  behave  itself;  he  had  been  left 
there  early  in  the  century,  probably  from  some  passing  ship.  The 
familiar  time-battered  carriages  with  their  jangling  bells  rumbled 
languidly  through  the  streets ;  a  match  factory  that  lights  all  the  cigars 
of  the  revolutionary  republic  jostled  for  space  among  the  dwellings; 
swarms  of  mosquitoes  drove  us  to  take  early  refuge  within  our  bed- 
shielding  mosquiteros;  American  bugle  calls  broke  now  and  then  on  the 
soft  night  air,  and  a  large  generous  bullet-hole  gave  the  final  national 
touch  to  our  weak-showered,  tubless  hotel  bathroom. 

Our  longer  trip  eastward  from  Santiago  happily  coincided  with  the 
monthly  inspection  tours  of  their  district  by  "  Mac  "  and  "  Big  George." 
The  run  to  Moca  through  a  rich,  floor-flat  valley  spreading  far  away 
to  the  southward  gave  new  evidence  of  the  fertility  of  Santo  Domingo. 
Bananas  and  cacao,  maize  and  yuca  in  the  same  fields,  now  and  then  a 
coffee  plantation,  constituted  the  chief  cultivation.  Tobacco  was  be- 
ing transplanted  here  and  there.  Frequent  villages  were  hidden  away 
in  the  greenery ;  nowhere  was  there  any  evidence  of  such  abject  poverty 
as  that  of  Haiti.  A  section  of  the  new  national  highway  which,  under 
American  incentive,  is  destined  some  day  to  connect  Monte  Cristi  with 
the  far-off  capital,  followed  the  railway,  but  its  black  loam  surface, 
hardened  into  enormous  cracks  and  ruts  since  the  end  of  the  last  rainy 
season,  made  it  too  venturesome  a  risk  even  for  the  courageous  Ford. 


212  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

A  long  viaduct  lifted  the  train  across  what  Spanish-Americans  call  a 
river,  and  a  moment  later  we  had  come  to  the  end  of  the  government 
railroad. 

Moca,  famous  for  its  coffee,  which  is  so  often  taken  to  be  of  Arabic 
origin,  is  rated  a  "  white  town,"  because  of  a  slightly  increased  per- 
centage of  pure,  or  nearly  pure,  descendants  of  Castilians.  Thanks  to 
the  coffee-clad  foot-hills  to  the  north  and  the  broad,  fertile  plain  to 
the  south  and  east,  it  is  wealthy  above  the  average,  and  rumor  has  it 
that  much  gold  might  be  dug  up  from  its  back  gardens  and  patios. 
There  is  special  reason  for  this,  for  like  its  neighbor,  Salcedo,  it  has 
ever  been  a  center  of  revolutionists,  bandits,  and  political  intrigues. 
Two  presidents  have  been  assassinated  in  its  streets;  its  hatred  of 
Americans  is  as  deadly  as  it  dares  to  be  under  a  firm  marine  com- 
mander. An  excellent,  cement-paved,  up-to-date  market  contrasts  with 
the  dusty  open  spaces,  with  their  squatting,  ragged  negresses,  in  Haiti. 
What  was  designed  to  be  an  imposing  stone  church,  however,  has  never 
reached  anything  like  completion.  Not  long  ago  the  resident  padre 
had  the  happy  thought  of  instituting  a  lottery  to  swell  the  contributions 
from  his  tardy  parishioners,  and  two  glaringly  new  square  cement 
towers  are  the  result  of  the  inspiration.  But  time  moves  more  swiftly 
than  the  best  devised  schemes;  as  the  towers  rise,  the  already  aged 
stone  walls  go  crumbling  away,  and  the  real  place  of  worship  consists 
merely  of  a  ragged  thatched  roof  on  stilts  covering  only  a  fraction 
of  the  half-walled  inclosure. 

The  Ferrocarril  de  Samana  y  Santiago,  neither  of  which  towns  it 
actually  reaches,  connects  at  Moca  with  the  government  line  and  runs 
to  the  port  of  Sanchez  on  the  east  coast,  with  short  branches  to  La 
Vega  and  San  Francisco  de  Macoris.  It  is  popularly  known  as  the 
"  Scotch  line,"  is  some  thirty  years  old  and  still  equipped  with  the 
original  rolling  stock,  but  has  a  meter  gauge,  more  commodious  and  bet- 
ter ventilated  cars,  a  more  easily  riding  roadbed,  a  daily  service  in 
both  directions  except  on  Sunday,  and  makes  slightly  better  speed  than 
its  rival.  The  short  run  to  La  Vega,  with  a  change  of  cars  at  Las 
Cabullas,  is  along  the  same  rich  valley.  Founded  by  Columbus  him- 
self in  a  slightly  different  locality,  this  center  of  a  splendidly  fertile 
cacao  and  agricultural  district  is  a  near  replica  of  Moca,  all  but  sur- 
rounded by  the  river  Camu.  Rich  black  mud,  as  is  fitting  in  a  region 
producing  the  chocolate-yielding  pods,  slackens  the  footsteps  of  visitor 
and  resident  alike  in  all  but  the  few  blocks  bordering  on  the  plaza 
though  all  its  streets  were  once  paved  with  stone  by  a  Haitian  governor. 


TRAVELS  IN  THE  CIBAO  213 

'  Mac "  found  interest  in  its  distilleries,  shops,  and  revenue  office ; 
'  Big  George  "  made  use  of  those  seven-league  legs  to  set  the  property 
valuation  of  the  town  in  one  short  day,  but  our  own  curiosity  centered 
ibout  the  "  Holy  Hill "  and  the  ruins  of  the  original  settlement.  To 
ell  the  truth  the  latter  does  not  give  the  traveler's  imagination  much 

0  build  upon.     A  few  miles  from  the  modern  town,  along  a  stone- 
urfaced  section  of  that  national  highway-to-be,  are  the  remnants  of 

1  few  stone  walls,  a  low  ancient  fortress  or  two,  and  slabs  of  good 
)ld  Spanish  mortar  that  has  outlived  the  flat,  pale-red  bricks  it  once 
icld  together,  all  hidden  away  in     the  hot  and  humid  wilderness  of 
i  badly  tended  cacao  plantation. 

The  great  place  of  pilgrimage  of  the  region,  indeed,  the  most  vene- 
•ated  spot  in  all  Santo  Domingo,  is  the  Santo  Cerro,  a  plump  hill  sur- 
nounted  by  a  massive  stone  church,  a  mile  or  so  nearer  the  town. 
STow  and  again  some  faithful  believer  still  comes  from  a  distant  corner 
)f  the  republic  and  climbs  the  long  stony  slope  on  his  knees,  though 
iuch  medieval  piety  has  all  but  died  out  even  in  Santo  Domingo.  The 
:hurch  at  the  summit  is  in  the  special  keeping  of  Nuestra  Senora  de 
as  Mercedes,  whose  miraculous  cures  are  reputed  to  have  no  superior 
mywhere  in  the  Catholic  world.  A  town  of  superstitious  invalids 
:lusters  about  the  entrance  to  the  inclosure  in  wretched  thatched  huts ; 
m  certain  days  of  the  year  the  sacred  hilltop  is  crowded  with  the  more 
nodern  type  of  pilgrim,  who  not  infrequently  comes  by  carriage  or 
notor. 

The  story  runs  —  and  up  to  a  certain  point  at  least  it  is  historically 
iccurate  —  that  Columbus  and  his  men  had  camped  on  the  hill,  when 
hey  beheld  swarming  up  from  the  vega  below  a  great  horde  of  Indians, 
)ent  on  their  immediate  destruction.  The  discoverer  was  equal  to  the 
occasion.  Ordering  his  men  to  cut  a  branch  from  an  immense  nispero 
ree  beneath  which  he  had  been  resting,  he  fashioned  it  into  a  crude 
:ross,  and  planted  it  before  the  advancing  enemy.  "  Then,"  as  the 
rautious  old  Italian  padre  who  to-day  replaces  his  illustrious  fellow- 
:ountryman  put  it,  "  I  was  not  present,  so  I  cannot  vouch  for  it,  but 
^hey  say  " —  that  the  Virgin  of  Las  Mercedes  appeared  in  the  sky  above 
md  saved  the  day  for  the  conquistadores.  At  any  rate  the  Indians 
were  repulsed,  and  the  Spaniards  at  once  set  about  building  La  Vega, 
Did  La  Vega,  that  is,  at  the  foot  of  the  hill. 

The  church  of  pilgrimage  is  modern,  marking  the  site  of  the  an- 
cient one  that  was  erected  over  the  improvised  cross.  It,  too,  is  liber- 
ally marked  with  patched  bullet-holes,  for  Dominican  revolutionists 


214          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

have  no  compunction  in  using  even  a  sacro-sacred  edifice  as  a  bar- 
ricade. Inside,  in  addition  to  the  richly  garbed  doll  over  the  altar 
and  the  usual  gaudy  bric-a-brac  of  such  places,  there  is  a  square  hole 
in  the  marble  pavement  of  the  principal  chapel,  filled  with  yellowish 
soil.  This  purports  to  be  the  exact  spot  on  which  Columbus  erected 
the  cross,  and  the  healing  properties  of  the  earth  within  it  depend  only 
on  the  faith  of  the  seeker  after  health  —  and  certain  other  indispensable 
little  formalities  which  are  inseparable  from  all  supernatural  cures. 
Pious  Dominicans  step  into  the  santo  hoyo  barefooted,  muttering 
promesas,  or  promises  of  reward  to  the  attendant  Virgin  if  their  health 
is  restored,  and  even  those  who  decline  to  uncover  their  pedal  infirmi- 
ties in  so  public  a  place  carry  off  a  pinch  or  a  handful  of  the  sacred 
earth.  Yet  the  "  holy  hole  "  is  not  the  deep  well  one  would  fancy  four 
centuries  of  such  excavation  must  have  left  it.  If  anything  it  is  slightly 
above  the  level  of  the  ground  outside  the  church.  For  no  matter  how 
much  of  the  yellow  soil  is  carried  off  during  the  day,  morning  always 
finds  the  hole  filled  again  by  some  "  miracle  " —  which  somehow  brings 
up  visions  of  a  poor  old  native  peon  wandering  about  in  the  darkest 
hours  of  the  night  with  a  sack  and  a  shovel. 

The  original  nispero  stood  for  more  than  four  hundred  years  in  the 
identical  spot  where  Columbus  found  it.  Not  until  the  month  of  May 
before  our  visit  did  it  at  length  fall  down — "  por  dcscnido;  for  lack 
of  care,"  as  the  present  padre  put  it,  sadly.  But  the  pious  old  Italian 
has  planted  in  its  place  a  "  son  "  of  the  historical  tree, —  a  twig  that 
already  shows  a  will  to  fill  the  footsteps  of  its  "  father " —  and  from 
the  wood  of  the  latter  he  has  made  a  boxful  of  little  crosses  which  he 
gives  away  "  to  true  believers  as  sacred  relics ;  to  others  as  souvenirs  " 
—  though  there  is  nothing  to  hinder  the  recipient  of  either  class  from 
dropping  into  the  padre's  bloodless  hand  a  little  remembrance  "  for  my 
poor." 

Even  though  Columbus  had  never  climbed  it  nor  "  miracles  "  been 
performed  upon  it,  the  holy  hilltop  would  be  a  place  worth  coming  far 
to  see,  or  at  least  to  look  from.  The  wonderful  floor-flat  Vega  Real, 
the  most  splendid  plain  in  Santo  Domingo,  if  not  in  the  West  Indies, 
is  spread  out  below  it  in  all  its  entirety.  Dense  green,  palm-dotted 
above  its  sea  of  vegetation,  even  its  cultivated  places  patches  of  un- 
broken greenery,  with  Moca,  Salcedo,  far-off  "  Macoris,"  and  half  a 
dozen  other  towns  plainly  visible,  a  sparkling  river  gleaming  here  and 
there,  walled  in  the  vast  distance  by  ranges  that  rise  to  pine-clad 
heights,  there  are  few  more  extensive,  verdant,  or  entrancing  sights  in 


TRAVELS  IN  THE  CIBAO  215 

the  world  than  this  still  more  than  half  virgin  vale.  Compared  with  it 
in  any  respect  the  far-famed  valley  of  Yumurii  in  Cuba  is  of  slight  im- 
portance. 

Several  hours'  ride  across  this  world's  garden  of  the  future,  with  a 
change  to,  and  later  from,  the  main  line,  brought  us  at  nightfall  to 
San  Francisco  de  Macoris.  Unlike  nearly  every  other  town  of  Santo 
Domingo,  this  one  is  of  modern  origin,  a  mere  stripling  of  less  than 
a  century  of  existence.  It  lies  where  the  Vega  Real  begins  to  slope 
upward  toward  the  northern  range,  with  extensive  cacao  estates  of 
rather  indolent  habits  hidden  away  among  the  foot-hills  behind  it. 
A  flat  town  of  tin  roofs,  its  outskirts  concealed  beneath  tropical  trees, 
it  offers  nothing  of  special  interest  to  the  mere  traveler. 

A  nine-day  fiesta  in  honor  of  Nuestra  Senora  de  la  Altagracia,  which 
had  broken  out  with  an  uproarious  beating  of  discordant  church  bells, 
tinny  drums,  and  home-made  fireworks  during  our  day  in  La  Vega 
raged  throughout  all  our  stay  in  "  Macoris."  All  the  population  capable 
of  setting  one  foot  before  the  other  joined  in  the  religious  processions 
that  frequently  wended  their  funereal  way  through  the  half-cobbled 
streets.  We  found  amusement,  too,  in  a  local  courtroom,  where  jus- 
tice was  dispensed  by  a  common-sense  old  judge  in  an  informal,  un- 
biased way  that  seemed  strange  in  a  Latin-American  atmosphere,  par- 
ticularly so  in  a  country  where  a  bare  five  years  before  most  decisions 
went  to  the  highest  bidder.  The  improvement  suggested  that  Santo 
Domingo  could  be  a  success  so  long  as  some  overwhelming  power  holds 
it  steady  by  appointing  the  better  class  of  officials  and  keeping  an 
exacting  eye  constantly  upon  them.  A  third  point  of  interest  which 
no  visitor  to  the  Macoris  of  the  north  should  neglect  is  a  chat  with 
"  old  man  Castillo."  -  Born  in  1834,  his  mind  still  extremely  active, 
this  grandson  of  old  Spain  has  been  one  of  the  chief  sources  of  in- 
formation to  the  wiser  Marine  commanders  of  the  district.  His  per- 
sonal reminiscences  of  Haitian  rule,  how  as  a  boy  he  marvelled  at  the 
high  hats  and  gorgeous  but  often  ludicrously  patched  uniforms  of  the 
black  troops  from  the  west,  make  a  colorful  picture  worth  beholding, 
even  were  he  not  the  only  surviving  general  of  the  war,  contemporary 
with  our  own  struggle  between  the  north  and  the  south,  that  brought 
the  final  expulsion  of  Spanish  rule  from  Santo  Domingo.  His  sum- 
ming up  of  the  present  status  of  the  revolutionary  republic  is  that  of 
nearly  all  the  conservative,  thoughtful  element  of  the  population.  For 
twenty  years  he  had  been  convinced  that  intervention  would  be  for 


216          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

the  future  good  of  the  country ;  for  at  least  ten  he  had  ardently  desired 
it;  he  would  consider  it  a  national  misfortune  to  have  it  withdrawn 
before  a  new  generation  has  been  thoroughly  cured  of  the  empleomania 
and  unruliness  which  had  become  the  curse  of  Dominican  life.  Mis- 
takes had  been  made  by  the  forces  of  occupation,  -rather  by  subordinates 
than  by  the  higher  command,  but  the  whole  list  of  them,  he  was  con- 
vinced, had  been  easier  to  bear  than  the  least  of  their  constantly  recur- 
ring revolutions. 

The  engine  that  had  dragged  us  up  to  the  edge  of  the  vega  had  not 
sufficiently  recovered  from  its  exertions  to  venture  down  again,  and  the 
locomotive  from  the  main  line  was  forced  to  delay  its  appointed  task 
to  come  and  get  us.  It  is  typical  of  the  easy-going  charm  of  the 
tropics  that  the  engineer  of  the  day  before  had  profanely  declined  to 
exchange  his  coal-fed  steed  for  that  of  his  colleague  from  the  east, 
despite  telegraphic  orders  from  the  master  of  transportation,  duly  and 
officially  transmitted  through  the  station  agent,  hence  our  not  unpre- 
cedented delay.  Beyond  the  junction  of  La  Jina  the  densely  green 
vega  changed  gradually  to  broad,  brown  savannahs  not  unlike  our  own 
Western  prairies.  These  slowly  gave  place  again  to  mata,  uncultivated 
half-wilderness  with  flat  open  spaces.  Pimentel,  a  considerable  town 
at  which  travelers  to  the  more  important  one  of  Cotui  changed  from 
car  seats  to  saddles,  was  followed  by  Villa  Riva  on  the  Yuma,  the 
largest  river  in  the  West  Indies  and  navigable  for  small  schooners. 
The  landscape  grew  still  more  open,  with  immense  trees  casting  here 
and  there  the  round  'shadows  of  noonday  and  cacao  beans  drying  on  rude 
raised  platforms  or  on  leaf-mats  spread  frankly  upon  the  ground  be- 
fore every  bohio,  or  thatch  and  palm-trunk  dwelling.  Royal  palm 
trees  stretched  in  close  but  broken  formation  across  the  flatlands  and 
on  up  over  a  high  ridge  like  the  soldiers  of  an  arboreal  army  in  dis- 
ordered rout.  Then  the  train  rumbled  out  across  a  swampy  region 
where  the  flanges  of  the  rails  were  frequently  covered  by  the  brackish 
water  and  the  exhausted  engine  stumbled  into  Sanchez  only  three  hours 
late. 

Strewn  along  the  base  of  a  rocky  wooded  ridge  on  the  inner  curve 
of  the  great  horseshoe  bay  of  Samana,  Sanchez  is  not  much  to  look  at 
despite  its  considerable  importance,  from  a  Dominican  point  of  view, 
as  the  chief  northeastern  port  and  the  headquarters  of  the  *'  Scotch 
line."  Several  large  sheet-iron  warehouses  and  a  long  wooden  pier 
sprinkled  with  cacao  beans  and  the  plentiful  cinders  of  a  switch  engine 
are  its  chief  features.  Since  the  virtual  repeal  of  the  export  tax  on 


TRAVELS  IN  THE  CIBAO  217 

cacao,  with  "  Big  George  "  and  the  new  real  estate  taxation  to  take 
its  place,  its  activity  has  somewhat  increased. 

Like  many  another  corner  of  Santo  Domingo,  mosquito-  and  gnat- 
bitten  Sanchez  would  be  a  dreary  spot  indeed  but  for  the  presence  of 
our  little  force  of  occupation.  The  natives  themselves  recognise  this, 
as  their  constant  appeals  for  medical  attention  from  the  uninvited 
strangers  demonstrate.  With  the  possible  exception  of  the  capital,  the 
republic  is  so  scantily  supplied  with  physicians  that  the  navy  doctors 
who  have  the  health  of  the  marines  in  their  keeping  are  permitted  to 
engage  in  civil  practice.  Even  in  Santiago,  with  its  20,000  inhabi- 
:ants,  the  great  majority  of  the  population  had  hitherto  no  other  remedy 
[or  their  varied  ailments  than  the  sticking  of  a  green  leaf  on  each 
:emple.  The  bright  youth  of  the  country  saw  no  reason  to  submit 
:o  the  arduous  training  incident  to  the  medical  profession  when  the 
study  of  revolutionary  tactics  promised  so  much  quicker  results. 
Small  wonder  the  poor  ignorant  populace,  knowing  no  better  course 
:o  take,  repair  in  their  illness  to  the  Santo  Cerro,  there  to  smear  them- 
selves with  holy  dirt  in  the  ardent  hope  of  improvement;  and  it  may 
3e  that  the  simple  priests  who  abet  them  in  those  absurd  antics  are  not 
io  rascally  as  they  seem  from  our  loftier  point  of  view,  for  they  too 
nay  in  their  ignorance  be  more  or  less  sincere  believers  in  this  non- 
sense. 

Sanchez  saw,  though  it  may  not  have  noted,  the  breaking  up  of  our 
:ongenial  quartet.  "  Mac  "  had  received  orders  to  proceed  overland 
hrough  the  bandit-famed  province  of  Seibo  to  the  capital,  and  ac- 
:epted  my  protection  and  guidance  on  the  journey.  That  region  being 
i  "  restricted  district "  for  women,  Rachel  was  forced  to  submit  to  the 
ender  mercies  of  the  Clyde  Line  ;  while  "  Big  George,"  whether  through 
levotion  to  duty,  a  disparity  between  his  own  length  and  that  of  his 
;alary,  or  for  a  newly  developed  fear  of  personal  violence,  herewith 
akes  his  final  leave  of  this  unvarnished  tale. 

Three  hours  in  an  open  motor-boat  manned  by  Marines,  close  along 
in  evergreen  shore  stretching  in  a  low,  cocoanut-clad  ridge  that  died 
way  on  the  eastern  horizon,  brought  the  surviving  pair  of  us  to  Samana. 
fumbled  up  the  slope  of  the  same  ridge,  with  a  harbor  sheltered  by 
icveral  densely  wooded  islets,  the  town  was  more  pleasing  than  the 
msier  Sanchez.  Great  patches  of  the  surrounding  cocoanut  forest 
vere  brown  with  the  ravages  of  a  parasitical  disease  that  attacks 
eaves,  branches,  and  fruit  not  only  of  these,  but  of  the  cacao  plants 


218          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

of  the  region.  Saddle-oxen,  once  common  throughout  both  divisions 
of  the  ancient  Quisqueya,  ambled  through  the  streets,  their  heads 
raised  at  a  disdainful  angle  by  the  reins  attached  to  their  nose- rings. 
The  soft  soil  and  the  frequent  rains  of  the  Samana  peninsula  account 
for  their  survival  here  in  spite  of  the  ascending  price  of  beef  and 
leather.  This,  too,  was  a  town  of  bullet-holes,  for  revolutionists  have 
frequently  found  its  isolation  and  its  custom-house  particularly  to  their 
liking.  It  is  a  rare  house  that  cannot  show  a  scar  or  two,  and  both 
the  sheet-iron  Methodist  churches  are  patched  like  the  garments  of 
a  Haitian  pauper. 

The  existence  of  two  such  anomalies  in  a  single  town  of  Catholic 
Santo  Domingo  calls  the  attention  to  the  most  interesting  feature  of 
Samana,  an  American  negro  colony  of  some  two  thousand  members 
scattered  about  the  peninsula.  Nearly  a  century  ago,  when  the  black 
troops  from  beyond  the  Massacre  had  overrun  the  entire  island,  the 
Haitian  king,  president,  or  emperor,  as  he  happened  at  the  moment  to 
be  called,  opened  negotiations  with  an  abolition  society  in  the  United 
States  with  the  hope  of  attracting  immigration.  Several  shiploads  of 
blacks,  all  Northern  negroes  who  had  escaped  or  bought  their  freedom, 
responded  to  the  invitation.  Most  of  them  came  from  Pennsylvania, 
Ohio,  and  New  Jersey ;  one  of  the  towns  of  the  peninsula  is  still  known 
as  Bucks  County  in  memory  of  the  exiles  from  that  part  of  the  first- 
named  state.  Numbers  of  the  new-comers  foiled  the  purpose  of  the 
Haitian  ruler  by  quickly  dying  of  tropical  diseases ;  a  very  few  found 
their  way  back  to  the  United  States.  The  survivors  settled  down  on 
the  five  acres  of  land  each  that  had  been  granted  them,  the  Haitians 
having  frankly  ignored  all  other  promises. 

Their  descendants  of  the  fourth  or  fifth  generation  are  proud  to 
this  day  of  their  "  American  "  origin.  They  hail  one  in  the  streets  of 
Samana  and  lose  no  time  in  establishing  their  special  identity,  in  a 
naive,  respectful  manner  that  has  all  but  disappeared  among  their 
brethren  in  our  own  land.  Scattered  over  all  the  Samana  peninsula, 
some  of  them  have  been  absorbed  by  the  Dominicans,  but  a  considerable 
colony  has  never  inter-married  with  the  natives  and  still  retains  the 
speech  and  customs  their  ancestors  brought  with  them.  The  majority 
are  farmers,  moderately  well-to-do,  living  miles  out  in  the  country  and 
only  now  and  then  riding  to  town  on  horse-  or  ox-back.  Unlike  most 
of  their  neighbors  they  do  not  live  in  concubinage,  but  are  married  in 
their  own  churches.  They  are  not  liked  by  the  Dominicans,  who  seem 
to  resent  their  superior  education  and  customs,  though  all  admit  that 


TRAVELS  IN  THE  CIBAO  219 

they  are  good  citizens  and  good  workers,  though  not  fighters,  as 
Americans  on  custom  border  control  soon  discovered.  Bigger  men 
both  physically  and  mentally  than  the  natives,  they  live  in  what  seem 
real  homes  compared  with  the  miserable  dirt-floor  huts  of  the  Domin- 
icans of  the  same  color.  Wherever  a  glimpse  through  a  doorway  shows 
comfort,  cleanliness,  and  a  shelf  of  books  one  is  almost  sure  to  find 
English  spoken.  It  is  a  remarkably  pure  English,  too,  for  a  tongue 
that  has  been  cut  off  from  its  source  for  nearly  a  century,  far  superior 
to  that  of  the  British  West  Indies,  though  with  certain  peculiarities 
of  negro  accent.  With  rare  exceptions  the  "  Americans  "  do  not  mix 
in  politics,  though  they  were  frequently  forced  to  fight  on  one  side 
or  the  other  during  the  revolutions,  because  neutrals,  abhorred  like  a 
vacuum,  lost  both  liberty  and  property  no  matter  which  side  won.  In 
such  times  no  protection  was  given  non-combatants,  except  to  for- 
eigners, and  the  "  American "  negroes  of  Samana  are  legally  Domi- 
nicans despite  their  protests.  One  cannot  but  be  proud  of  the  strength 
of  American  influence,  of  the  compliment  to  our  civilization  which  is 
implied  by  the  insistence  of  these  exiles  on  keeping  a  sort  of  separate 
nationality,  by  the  strong  tendency  toward  good  citizenship  they  have 
maintained  through  all  their  generations. 

In  a  little  parsonage  on  the  edge  of  town  lives  the  Rev.  James,  pastor 
of  the  A.  M.  E.  church,  and  temporarily  in  charge  also  of  the  Wesleyan 
place  of  worship,  locally  known  as  St.  Peter's.  His  bishop,  curiously 
enough,  lives  in  Detroit.  Pastor  James  is  a  full-blooded  negro  whose 
male  ancestors  have  been  ministers  for  generations.  Sent  to  the 
Northern  States  for  his  final  schooling,  like  many  children  of  the 
colony,  he  worked  his  way  through  Beloit  College.  His  wide  fund  of 
information  on  all  subjects  would  make  many  of  our  own  ministers 
seem  narrow  by  comparison ;  yet  he  has  little  of  that  curious  mixture 
of  humility  and  arrogance  which  is  so  common  among  educated 
negroes.  Even  in  such  minor  details  as  refraining  from  the  use  of 
tobacco  his  personal  habits  are  a  contrast  to  the  often  licentious  lives 
of  Dominican  priests.  In  his  fairly  voluminous  library  so  rare  in 
Santo  Domingo,  such  books  as  "  Up  from  Slavery,"  "  Negro  Aspira- 
tions," and  many  other  tomes,  magazines,  and  encyclopedias  of  a  seri- 
ous —  and  what  is  more,  not  merely  religious  —  nature  attract  the  eye. 

Each  of  the  churches  has  some  three  hundred  members,  many  of 
whom  ride  in  from  miles  around  on  Sundays.  Inside  the  bullet-rid- 
dled edifices  the  un-Catholic  pews,  the  mottoes  in  English  over  the  pul- 
pits, the  old-fashioned  organs  all  add  to  the  American  atmosphere. 


220          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

A  third  church  is  maintained  in  the  region,  and  the  colony  has  several 
schools  of  its  own.  Among  the  best  American  influences  the  colonists 
have  retained  is  the  un-Dominican  tendency  to  help  themselves  and 
not  depend  upon  the  government  in  such  matters.  Complete  segrega- 
tion of  sexes,  from  the  youngest  pupils  to  the  teachers,  has  been  adopted 
in  these  schools,  where  both  Spanish  and  English  are  taught.  Un- 
like Haiti,  Santo  Domingo  grants  such  institutions  no  government  aid. 
The  pastor  receives  half  his  salary  from  mission  funds  from  the 
United  States,  and  the  other  half  not  at  all,  because  local  contributions 
are  eaten  up  by  educational  requirements. 

The  Rev.  James  has  a  fund  of  stories,  more  amusing  to  the  hearer 
than  to  the  teller,  for  those  who  care  to  listen.  During  one  of  the 
last  revolutions,  for  instance,  the  town  was  attacked  during  services, 
and  the  congregation,  putting  more  faith  in  self-help  than  in  super- 
natural aid,  stopped  in  the  middle  of  a  prayer  to  cut  a  hole  through 
the  church  floor,  and  remained  on  the  ground  beneath  until  Monday 
morning.  The  colony,  in  the  opinion  of  its  pastor,  is  eager  to  have 
American  occupation  continue,  or  at  least  to  have  the  United  States  take 
possession  of  the  bay  of  Samana,  as  it  has  that  of  Guantanamo  in 
Cuba,  that  forces  may  be  close  at  hand  to  curb  revolutions.  Influ- 
ential Dominicans,  he  is  convinced,  prefer  the  present  status,  with  the 
exception,  of  course,  of  the  politicians,  and  even  the  rank  and  file  are 
beginning  to  see  the  error  of  their  former  ways  and  to  wish  peace, 
security,  and  no  more  destruction  of  their  farms  and  herds  more  than 
complete  national  independence.  On  the  whole  it  is  remarkable  how 
this  colony  has  maintained  its  customs  intact  through  all  the  long  years 
since  its  establishment.  Once  given  a  good  start  the  negro  seems  to 
endure  the  deteriorating  influences  of  the  tropics  better  than  the  white 
man.  The  Rev.  James,  four  generations  removed  from  the  temperate 
zone,  is  far  more  of  a  credit  to  civilization  than  many  a  Caucasian  who 
has  lived  a  mere  twenty  years  in  equatorial  lands. 

Samana  has  a  French,  or,  more  exactly,  a  Haitian  colony  dating 
back  to  the  same  period,  hence  many  of  its  inhabitants  speak  English, 
Spanish,  and  "  Creole."  This  portion  of  the  population,  living  chiefly 
in  the  far  outskirts,  is  as  much  inferior  to  the  Dominicans  as  the  latter 
are  to  the  "  Americans."  Neapolitans  and  "  Turks  "  monopolize  most 
of  the  commerce,  and  as  usual  do  no  productive  labor.  Coffee  was 
formerly  grown  in  some  quantity  on  the  peninsula,  but  cacao  was 
planted  in  its  place  when  the  latter  began  to  command  high  prices. 
Now  that  the  blight  has  attacked  this  and  there  is  hardly  enough  of 


TRAVELS  IN  THE  CIBAO  221 

the  former  produced  for  local  use,  exports  are  slight.  Bananas  could 
be  grown  in  abundance;  oranges  are  so  plentiful  that  the  town  boys 
play  marbles  with  them,  but  there  is  no  market,  or  rather  no  transporta- 
tion for  such  bulky  products,  which  are  sold  only  in  small  quantities 
to  passing  ships  for  their  own  use. 

Among  the  sights  of  the  town  is  a  fine  new  cockpit  as  carefully 
planned  as  our  metropolitan  theaters.  It  resembles  a  tiny  bull-ring, 
the  fighting  space  surrounded  by  upright  boards  painted  a  bright  red, 
a  comfortable  gallery  rising  about  the  outer  circle,  ring-side  boxes 
furnished  with  good  cajie  chairs  saving  the  elite  the  annoyance  of  mix- 
ing with  the  collarless  rank  and  file.  Cozy  little  dens  for  the  fighting 
cocks  open  directly  into  the  ring;  a  bright  new  thatched  roof  shades 
spectators  and  feathered  gladiators  alike ;  an  outer  wall  of  yagua  rises 
just  high  enough  to  give  the  breeze  free  play,  yet  at  the  same  time  to 
prevent  the  tallest  citizen  from  seeing  the  contest  without  paying  his 
peseta  at  the  neat  little  ticket  window.  The  "  American "  residents 
roll  pious  eyes  at  the  mention  of  this  nefarious  sport.  Not  merely  do 
they  consider  it  beneath  them  to  attend  such  exhibitions,  but  look  upon 
them  as  a  particularly  sinful  way  of  losing  caste,  since  they  are  always 
held  on  the  "  holy  Sabbath." 

We  sailed  across  the  bay  on  the  mailboat  Nereida,  a  wretched  little 
single-masted  derelict  no  larger  than  an  average  lifeboat.  Though  its 
bottom  was  already  heaped  with  broken  rock  ballast,  an  incredible  load 
of  American  patent  medicine,  of  flour,  rum,  soap,  cigarettes,  sprouted 
onions,  cottonseed  oil,  and  sundry  odds  and  ends  was  tumbled  into 
it  before  the  mails  finally  put  in  an  appearance  an  hour  after  sailing 
time.  Nine  passengers  and  a  crew  of  two,  all  negroes  except  "  Mac  " 
and  myself,  crowded- the  frequently  sea-washed  deck.  What  our  fate 
would  have  been  had  one  of  the  sudden  squalls  for  which  West  Indian 
waters  are  noted  overtaken  us  it  was  all  too  easy  to  imagine. 

A  steady  wind  on  the  beam  carried  us  diagonally  across  the  gulf 
in  the  general  direction  of  our  destination  without  the  necessity  of 
tacking.  The  shore  we  were  leaving  was  the  scene  of  the  first  blood- 
shed between  Columbus  and  the  aborigines  of  the  New  World,  the 
forerunner  of  countless  massacres.  The  bay  was  once  offered  to  the 
United  States  by  a  Dominican  president,  but  a  single  congressman 
caused  us  to  decline  the  honor.  Tiny  fishing  boats  with  palm-leaf 
sails  ventured  a  few  miles  out  from  the  land,  then  abandoned  to  us 
the  seascape,  which  remained  unbroken  until  we  neared  the  southern 


222          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

shore  well  on  in  the  afternoon.  Constant  quarrels  between  the  two 
halves  of  the  crew  on  the  advisability  of  tacking  or  not  tacking  en- 
livened all  our  snail-like,  zigzag  course  along  the  face  of  the  land,  and 
black  night  had  come  before  we  climbed  over  the  water-soaked  cargo 
to  the  drunken  pier  of  Jovero. 

A  gawky  village  of  some  six  hundred  inhabitants,  boasting  only  one 
two-story  house,  this  out-of-the-world  place  was  quickly  thrown  into 
a  furore  of  curiosity  over  its  unexpected  white  visitors.  Even  the 
commander  of  the  guardia  detachment  was  a  native  lieutenant;  the 
most  nearly  Caucasian  resident  was  the  town  treasurer,  a  young 
"  Turk  "  from  Tripoli,  in  the  back  of  whose  more  than  general  store 
we  were  finally  served  a  much  needed  meal.  With  three  thousand  per- 
sons in  the  region  only  two  copies  of  a  weekly  newspaper,  according 
to  the  post  master,  brought  them  the  world's  -news,  and  that  was  a 
pathetic  little  sheet  from  across  the  bay.  No  wonder  false  rumors 
have  a  free  field  in  such  a  community.  Cattle,  pigs,  cacao,  and  an 
unseasoned  tobacco  sold  in  mouldy-scented  rolls  six  feet  long,  called 
andullos,  made  up  the  scanty  exports  of  the  district.  Barely  one  per 
cent,  of  its  territory  is  under  cultivation,  for  like  all  the  province  of 
Seibo  bandits  still  harass  it  long  after  the  rest  of  the  republic  has  been 
pacified. 

Under  superior  orders  the  native  lieutenant  assigned  a  sergeant  and 
eleven  men  of  the  guardia  to  accompany  us  through  the  bandit  haunts 
beyond.  As  they  lined  up  for  final  inspection  they  were  spick  and 
span  out  of  all  parallel  in  my  tropical  experience,  from  newly  ironed 
breeches  to  oiled  rifles;  ten  minutes  later  they  were  marching  knee- 
deep  through  a  river  in  the  well-polished  shoes  they  would  gladly  have 
left  behind  had  American  discipline  permitted  it.  Their  own  fault, 
I  mused,  for  they  might  have  spent  some  of  their  ample  garrison  leisure 
in  building  a  bridge;  but  I  soon  withdrew  the  mental  criticism.  A 
single  bridge  would  not  much  have  improved  that  route.  It  consisted 
of  a  wide  cleared  space  through  the  mountainous  forest,  and  nothing 
more  —  rather  less,  in  fact,  for  in  many  places  neither  the  stumps  or 
the  huge  felled  trunks  had  been  removed.  Streams  succeeded  one  an- 
other in  swift  succession;  the  almost  constant  rains  of  this  region  had 
made  the  steep  slopes  precarious  toboggans  of  red  mud,  where  they  were 
not  corduroyed  with  camclones,  slippery  ridges  of  earth  with  deep 
troughs  of  muddy  water  between  them.  Here  and  there  the  guards 
were  forced  to  climb  a  slimy  bank  virtually  on  their  hands  and  knees ; 
in  other  places  the  mud  clung  to  their  feet  in  hundred-weight ;  with  the 


TRAVELS  IN  THE  CIBAO  223 

densest  vegetation  on  either  hand  cutting  off  all  suggestion  of  breeze, 
the  sweat  dripped  from  them  in  streams.  Within  half  an  hour  the 
bedraggled,  soaked,  mud-plastered  rifle-bearers  staggering  before  and 
behind  us  along  the  trail  showed  slight  resemblance  indeed  to  the  per- 
fectly starched  and  polished  young  men  who  had  been  drawn  up  for 
the  lieutenant's  inspection. 

"  Mac  "  and  I  on  our  sorry  mounts  were  not  much  better  off.  It 
was  beginning  to  be  apparent  why  one  can  get  from  Santiago  to  New 
York  more  easily  and  in  less  time  than  to  the  Dominican  capital.  The 
ex-"  top,"  as  a  high  government  official,  had  been  given  Jovero's  best 
mule,  but  it  would  be  easy  to  imagine  a  better  one.  My  own  steed  had 
long  since  become  a  candidate  for  the  glue  factory  and  his  suffering 
air  had  already  riddled  my  conscience  before  a  shifting  of  the  saddle- 
cloth disclosed  an  open  sore  on  his  back  larger  than  my  two  hands. 
Santo  Domingo  needs  such  a  law  as  that  with  which  we  cured  the 
Canal  Zone  of  this  heartless  Latin-American  custom  of  working  their 
animals  in  a  mutilated  condition.  But  what  could  one  do  under  the 
circumstances  but  urge  on  the  suffering  beast?  We  had  come  too  far 
for  me  to  turn  back  in  the  faint  hope  of  getting  another  mount ;  it  was 
as  necessary  to  reach  Seibo  as  it  was  not  to  leave  "  Mac  "  in  the  lurch, 
and  even  had  I  taken  to  my  feet  along  with  the  mud-caked  guards  the 
abandoned  animal  would  have  been  almost  certain  to  fall  into  the  still 
less  compassionate  hands  of  the  bandits. 

Precautions  against  the  latter  now  began  to  be  taken  in  earnest. 
We  were  approaching  a  labyrinth  of  sharp  gullies  and  high  hills  which 
had  always  been  a  favorite  lurking-place  of  the  outlaws.  Any  turn  of 
the  now  narrow  trail  would  have  made  a  splendid  ambush.  Drench- 
ing showers  at  frequent  intervals  made  it  easy  for  the  ruffians  to  sneak 
up  through  the  bush  unheard ;  the  heavy  humidity  of  a  tropical  rainy 
season  deadens  sounds  even  when  the  sun  shines.  The  sergeant  ar- 
ranged his  men  in  skirmish  formation,  with  strict  orders  not  to  "  bunch 
up  "  under  any  circumstances.  A  barefoot  native  on  horseback,  who 
had  overtaken  us  soon  after  our  departure  from  Jovero,  was  forbid- 
den to  ride  ahead  of  the  party.  We  had  no  means  of  knowing  whether 
his  assertion  that  he  had  hastened  to  join  us  for  safety's  sake,  after 
waiting  a  fortnight  for  a  chance  to  make  the  journey,  was  truth  or  pre- 
tense. These  preparations  concluded,  we  moved  forward  ready  for 
instant  battle. 

Nothing  of  the  kind  occurred.  I  might  have  known  it  would  not ; 
there  is  no  greater  Jonah  on  earth  than  I  for  scaring  off  adventure. 


224  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

Trails  worn  deeper  than  a  horseman's  head  and  so  narrow  as  to  rub 
our  elbows  offered  attackers  comparative  immunity;  the  dense  jungle 
might  easily  have  concealed  a  score  of  men  within  a  yard  or  two  on 
either  side  of  us;  the  steepness  of  the  mountain-top,  forcing  us  to 
dismount  and  drag  our  weary,  stumbling  animals  behind  us,  left  us 
scant  breath  to  spend  in  physical  combat,  yet  nothing  but  the  deep,  op- 
pressive silence  of  a  tropical  wilderness  enlivened  our  laborious  prog- 
ress. By  the  time  the  summit  was  reached  we  were  ready  to  believe 
that  the  bandits  of  Seibo  were  a  myth.  An  unbroken  expanse  of 
vegetation,  dark  green  everywhere,  spread  away  to  the  limitless  south- 
ern horizon.  Yet  the  rains  ceased  abruptly  at  the  crest  of  the  range, 
and  the  trail  that  carried  us  swiftly  downward  was  as  dry  as  the 
Sahara. 

The  sergeant  gradually  relaxed  his  vigilance  and  let  his  men  once 
more  straggle  along  at  will,  though  he  watched  closely  the  rare  trav- 
elers who  began  to  appear.  Several  of  the  guards,  I  found,  as  we 
grouped  together  again  for  a  rest,  spoke  to  one  another  in  Samana 
English  rather  than  Spanish.  When  I  gave  a  cheering  word  in  the 
latter  tongue  to  a  ragged  native  civilian  who  had  plodded  at  my  horse's 
heels  since  the  beginning  of  the  journey,  he  glanced  up  at  me  with 
an  expression  of  incomprehension  and  asked  the  guard  behind  him 
to  interpret  my  remark.  He  was  Canadian  born,  had  been  seven  years 
in  the  sugar  fields  of  Cuba  without  learning  a  word  of  Spanish,  and 
had  been  robbed  by  Haitian  cacos  of  everything  except  his  tattered  hat, 
shirt  and  trousers.  "  Nobody  told  me  there  were  that  kind  of  people 
in  that  country,"  he  explained,  plaintively,  "  I  never  thought  such  things 
of  people  of  my  color."  The  wisdom  gained  from  that  unexpected 
experience  developed  a  precaution  that  had  held  him  nearly  three  weeks 
in  Jovero  awaiting  a  safe  opportunity  to  proceed  to  the  sugar  district 
of  southeastern  Santo  Domingo. 

We  were  soon  down  on  the  flatlands  again,  but  it  was  a  long  time 
before  the  first  signs  of  cultivation  broke  the  dreary  wilderness.  This 
was  a  cacao  canuco,  or  tiny  plantation,  overgrown  with  brush  and 
weeds  and  with  the  scarred  ruins  of  a  hut  in  one  corner  of  it.  More 
of  them  lined  the  way  for  mile  after  mile,  all  abandoned  for  the  past 
three  years,  fear  of  the  bandits  making  it  impossible  even  to  pick  the 
pods  that  ripened,  rotted,  and  fell  beneath  the  trees.  These  endless 
gardens  choked  with  weeds  made  this  wonderfully  fertile  valley  seem 
doubly  pitiful  in  its  uncultivated  immensity.  The  guards,  who,  after 
the  fashion  of  their  kind,  had  made  no  provision  whatever  against  a 


TRAVELS  IN  THE  CIBAO  225 

long  day's  hunger,  climbed  the  rotting  stick  fences  and  picked  half- 
green  bananas  and  papayas,  or  lechosas,  as  the  Dominican  calls  them, 
from  the  untended  plantations.  At  length  huts  still  standing  began  to 
appear,  then  inhabited  ones,  occupied  almost  exclusively  by  women, 
showed  that  we  were  approaching  the  safety  zone.  The  creak  of 
guinea  hens,  like  rusty  hinges,  commenced  to  break  the  silence;  goats 
took  to  capering  out  of  our  way;  better  dressed  people  of  both  sexes 
gradually  put  in  an  appearance,  crowing  cocks  challenged  one  another 
in  ever  increasing  number,  and  at  sunset  the  again  road-wide  trail  be- 
came the  main  street  of  the  town  of  Seibo. 

The  capital  of  a  province  without  so  much  as  the  pretense  of  a 
hotel  is  a  rarity  even  in  backward  Santo  Domingo.  Nothing  but  the 
most  miserable  of  thatched  huts,  with  three  human  nests  on  legs  in  one 
tiny  room,  and  a  back-yard  reed  kitchen  attended  by  a  ragged  old 
negro  crone,  offers  accommodation  to  unbefriended  strangers  in  Seibo. 
It  is  perhaps  the  most  out-of-the-way,  astonished-at-strangers,  unac- 
quainted-with-the-world  town  of  any  size  that  can  be  found  in  the 
West  Indies.  Though  a  large  detachment  of  marines  camp  at  its 
bandit-threatened  door,  it  showed  unbounded  surprise  to  see  American 
civilians.  Groups  of  almost  foppishly  dressed  men  lounged  about  its 
streets,  yet  the  town  itself  was  little  short  of  filthy.  A  curious  old 
domed  church,  some  of  it  built  four  hundred  years  ago,  its  original 
color  faded  to  a  spotted  pale-blue,  and  its  aged  square  tower  surmounted 
by  a  marine  wireless  apparatus,  is  the  only  building  of  importance. 
From  the  top  of  this,  or  the  one  other  place  in  town  where  one  can  go 
upstairs,  Seibo  is  seen  to  be  surrounded  by  low  hills,  everywhere 
wooded,  without  a  hut  outside  its  compact  mass,  its  skirts  drawn  up 
like  those  of  a  nervous  old  maid  in  constant  dread  of  mice.  The  in- 
evitable fortress  that,gives  Haitian  and  Dominican  villages  a  likeness  to 
the  castle-crowned  towns  of  medieval  Italy  watches  over  it  from  a 
near-by  knoll  and  houses  its  gnardia  garrison.  Built  almost  entirely 
of  wood,  the  low  houses  of  the  better  class  are  roofed  with  sheet-iron, 
the  poorer  with  palm-leaf  thatch.  It  has  no  plaza  but  merely  a  stony 
plowed  rectangle  of  unoccupied  ground  in  its  center.  The  public  school 
has  no  doors  between  its  rooms,  hence  is  a  constant  uproar  of  teachers 
and  classes  shouting  against  one  another.  Seibo  bears  the  reputation 
of  being  always  "  agin'  the  gover'ment,"  and  it  is  not  strange  that  we 
found  its  people  somewhat  more  surly  toward  Americans  than  those 
of  the  Cibao. 

That  did  not  hinder  them  from  obeying  "  Mac's  "  official  commands 


226          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

with  fitting  alacrity,  however,  whether  they  were  a  hint  to  shop-keepers 
to  display  their  licenses  as  the  law  required  or  a  whisper  to  his  local 
subordinates  to  correct  their  methods.  The  slip-shod  ways  of  native 
rule  cannot  long  endure  where  an  exacting  American  official  drops  in 
unexpectedly  every  now  and  then  to  inspect  things  down  to  the  slightest 
detail.  Such  close-rein  methods  are  indispensable  to  the  proper  func- 
tioning of  revenue  laws  in  Santo  Domingo.  Your  Latin-American 
can  seldom  rise  to  the  point  of  impersonal  application  of  governmental 
decrees;  with  him  it  is  always  a  personal  matter  between  official  and 
inhabitant.  Checked  up  in  the  courteous  yet  firm  manner  which  "  Mac  " 
had  learned  by  long  contact  with  this  race,  his  subordinates  had  a 
curious  resemblance  to  backward  schoolboys  whom  a  teacher  holds  up 
to  scratch  by  frequent  kindly  assistance  with  a  threat  of  the  switch 
behind  it.  The  government  of  occupation  has  done  everything  pos-» 
sible  to  remove  temptation  from  both  inspected  and  inspector  in  in- 
ternal revenue  matters.  Every  distillery,  for  instance,  is  so  con- 
structed that  the  owner  may  watch  his  product  behind  iron  bars  as  it 
runs  from  still  to  receptacle,  yet  not  a  drop  can  he  extract  without 
calling  upon  the  inspector  to  produce  his  keys.  By  such  contrivances 
Santo  Domingo  is  being  gradually  weaned  away  from  the  irregulari- 
ties that  were  long  the  curse  of  its  financial  legislation. 

An  invitation  from  the  major  in  command  caused  us  to  change  with 
alacrity  on  our  second  day  in  Seibo  from  the  "  hotel "  to  a  tent  in  the 
marine  camp  on  the  edge  of  town,  with  a  far-reaching  view,  an  un- 
failing breeze,  and  a  "swimming  hole"  in  the  river  below.  Here, 
by  dint  of  spending  most  of  the  day  insisting,  by  offering  twice  the 
local  rate  for  good  mounts,  by  promising  a  peon  "  guide  "  a  week's 
pay  for  a  day's  work,  by  seeing  that  the  horses  were  within  the  marine 
corral  before  going  to  bed,  and  by  being  generally  and  strictly  from 
Missouri,  we  succeeded  in  getting  off  the  next  morning  at  five.  The 
air  was  damp  and  fresh.  For  the  first  time  in  five  years  I  beheld  the 
Southern  Cross  I  had  once  known  like  the  features  of  an  old  friend. 
Endless  forests  with  a  level  roadway  cut  through  them  shut  us  in  all 
through  the  morning,  only  a  few  canucos  breaking  the  perspective  of 
sheer  forest  walls.  As  in  Haiti,  the  peasants  of  Seibo  live  back  out  of 
sight  from  the  main  trails,  for  fear  of  bandits,  as  the  vicinity  of  some 
of  our  railroads  is  still  shunned  out  of  dread  of  marauding  tramps. 
At  another  large  marine  camp  we  left  the  roadway  and  sagging  tele- 
graph wire  to  La  Romana  and  struck  due  southward  along  a  half- 
cleared  trail  that  after  an  hour  or  more  brought  us  out  upon  the  sun- 


TRAVELS  IN  THE  CIBAO  227 

toasted  advance  guard  of  the  cane-fields  of  the  south.  Amid  the  stumps 
and  logs  of  immense  tropical  trees,  black  with  the  recent  burning,  baby 
sugar-cane  was  already  turning  bright  green  the  broad  expanse  of 
newly  felled  forest.  Negroes  almost  without  exception  from  the 
French  or  British  West  Indies  were  adding  row  after  row  of  the 
virgin  fields  to  the  sugar  supply  of  a  hungry  world.  Farther  on,  be- 
yond another  strip  of  forest  soon  due  for  the  same  fate,  came  im- 
mense stretches  of  full-sized  cane,  then  toiling  groups  of  cane-cutters, 
huge  creaking  cane-carts,  finally  a  railroad  that  scorns  to  carry  any- 
thing but  cane,  and  by  ten  we  had  brought  up  at  the  batey  of  Diego, 
our  mounted  "  guide  "  straggling  in  far  behind  us. 

Many  of  the  workmen  of  the  surrounding  "  colonies  "  had  gone  on 
strike  that  morning.  The  Dominican  delegate  to  the  recent  labor 
conference  in  Washington  had  brought  back  with  him  this  new  method 
of  bringing  to  terms  the  "  wicked  American  and  Cuban  capitalists  who 
would  starve  us  while  carrying  off  our  national  wealth."  It  was  no- 
ticeable, however,  that  only  a  small  fraction  of  the  idle  groups  crowd- 
ing the  batey  were  natives  of  the  country ;  the  great  majority  of  them 
grumbled  in  the  easy-going  drawl  of  the  British  negro.  Small  wonder 
the  arguments  of  the  Spanish-speaking  manager  who  harangued  them 
from  the  door  of  the  office  fell  chiefly  on  uncomprehending  ears.  Be- 
sides, though  their  own  arguments  were  simpler,  they  were  not  easily 
refuted.  "  Wi'  rice  twenty-fi'  cent  a  pound  an'  sugah  eighteen  cent  in 
Macoris  town  what  y'u  go'n'  a  do,  mahn,  what  y'u  go'n'  a  do?  An' 
de  washer  lady  she  ax  you  a  shilling  fo'  to  wash  a  shirt !  How  us  can 
cut  a  caht-load  o'  canes  fo'  seventy  cent?  Better  fo'  we  if  us  detain 
we  at  home." 

Leaving  manager  and  strikers  to  settle  their  differences  without  our 
assistance  we  climbed  to  the  top  of  a  car-load  of  cane  and  were  soon 
creaking  away  across  the  slightly  rolling  country.  A  train  so  long 
that  it  had  to  be  cut  in  two  at  the  first  suggestion  of  a  grade  squirmed 
away  before  us  like  a  great  green  snake.  The  land  became  one  vast 
expanse  of  sugar-cane,  broken  only  by  the  clustered  buildings  of  the 
bateys  and  dotted  here  and  there  by  a  royal  palm  or  ceiba,  which  the 
woodsmen  had  not  had  the  heart  to  fell.  Branch  railroads,  like  the 
ribs  of  a  leaf,  brought  the  product  of  all  this  down  to  the  main  line, 
whence  it  poured  into  the  capacious  -maw  of  the  Central  Santa  Fe, 
the  tall  chimneys  of  which  appeared  toward  sunset,  backed  far  off  by 
a  slightly  yellowish  Caribbean. 

San  Pedro  de  Macoris  on  the  southern  coast  is  a  more  important 


228  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

town  than  its  near  namesake  of  the  Cibao,  yet  it  is  disappointing  for 
all  its  size.  With  a  certain  amount  of  modern  bustle,  more  city  fea- 
tures than  we  had  seen  since  Santiago,  a  fair  percentage  of  full  white 
inhabitants,  and  a  rather  "  cocky  "  air,  it  exists  chiefly  because  of  a 
bottle-shaped  harbor  with  a  dangerously  narrow  entrance  between  reefs, 
while  its  docks  are  largely  manned  by  British  negroes. 

We  finally  found  passengers  enough  to  afford  the  trip  by  automo- 
bile from  Macoris  to  the  capital.  With  the  single  exception  of  the 
Haitian  journey  to  Las  Cahobas,  I  have  never  kmown  of  a  worse  road 
being  actually  covered  by  automobile.  Sandy  or  stony  beyond  words, 
a  constant  succession  of  rocks,  stumps,  scrub  trees,  sun-baked  mud- 
holes,  without  a  yard  of  smooth  going,  it  was  in  fact  no  road  at  all, 
but  so  often  had  travelers  followed  the  same  general  direction  that  a 
kind  of  route  had  grown  up  of  itself.  Several  times  we  came  to 
temporary  grief ;  once  we  ran  into  a  tree  and  smashed  a  case  of  Cuban 
rum  that  had  been  tied  on  the  running-board,  and  as  the  chauffeur  felt 
impelled  to  "  save  "  as  much  of  the  precious  stuff  as  possible,  his  driv- 
ing was  far  from  impeccable  during  the  rest  of  the  journey.  One 
after  another  we  bounced  through  such  towns  as  La  Yeguada,  Hato 
Vie  jo,  Santa  Isabela,  all  spread  out  carelessly  on  the  flat,  dry,  prairie- 
like  country  peculiar  to  the  coral  formation  of  southern  Santo  Domingo. 
In  one  place  the  mud  was  so  deep  that  we  were  forced  to  turn  aside  for 
a  few  yards  into  the  private  property  of  a  Cuban  ex-general,  who  oc- 
cupies a  wattled  hut  with  his  illegitimate  brood  of  mulattoes.  This 
wily  individual,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  he  draws  a  generous  monthly 
pension  through  a  foreign  bank  in  the  capital,  has  placed  a  guard  at  his 
gate  and  collects  two  dollars  from  every  passing  automobile.  Then 
came  more  sugarcane,  another  large  mill  with  its  creaking  ox-carts 
and  striking  negroes,  and  from  San  Isidro  on  sixteen  kilometers  of 
excellent  highway  to  Duarte,  a  suburb  of  the  capital,  and  across  the 
Ozama  river  into  Santo  Domingo  City.  The  American  governor  of 
the  republic  had  recently  made  the  official  announcement  that  sixty  per 
cent,  of  the  great  national  highway  from  the  capital  to  Monte  Cristi 
was  already  completed !  He  could  scarcely  have  taken  his  own  words 
seriously  had  he  been  privileged  to  follow  us  in  the  opposite  direction. 


CHAPTER  X 

SANTO   DOMINGO   UNDER   AMERICAN   RULE 

THIS  is  not  the  place  to  recapitulate  in  detail  the  busy  history 
of  Santo  Domingo, —  how  the  island  of  Quisqueya,  or  Haiti, 
was  discovered  by  Columbus  on  his  first  voyage  and  named 
Hispaniola;  how  it  was  gradually  settled  by  the  Spaniards,  who  as 
usual  massacred  the  aborigines  and  imported  African  slaves  in  their 
place  to  cultivate  the  newly  introduced  sugarcane ;  how  French 
buccaneers  from  Tortuga  eventually  conquered  the  western  end  of  the 
island  and  were  recognized  by  having  a  governor  sent  out  from  France ; 
how  battles  raged  to  and  fro  between  the  French  and  the  Spaniards 
until  something  like  the  present  frontier  between  Haiti  and  Santo 
Domingo  was  established;  how  the  English  expedition  sent  out  by 
Cromwell  was  repulsed  and  contented  themselves  with  occupying  Ja- 
maica instead;  how  the  negroes  of  Haiti  at  length  rose  against  their 
masters  and  drove  the  French  from  the  island,  then  ruled  the  whole 
of  it  for  twenty-two  years ;  how  the  Republica  Dominicana  won  her 
independence  from  Spain,  voluntarily  surrendered  it  again,  regained 
it  in  1865,  and  entered  into  that  career  of  constantly  recurring  revolu- 
tions, in  which  the  winner  always  became  president  and  his  supporters 
the  possessors  of  the  public  revenues,  that  eventually  led  to  the  present 
American  occupation.  The  interest  of  the  modern  reader  is  more  apt 
to  begin  with  this  century.  In  1906,  in  order  to  keep  Germany,  Bel- 
gium, Italy,  and  several  other  creditors  from  landing  in  Santo  Domingo 
to  collect  the  debts  of  their  nationals,  the  United  States  advanced  $20,- 
000,000  and  took  over  the  custom  houses  as  security.  The  following 
year  the  United  States  and  the  Dominican  Republic  signed  a  conven- 
tion under  which  the  former  was  to  appoint  a  receiver  for  bankrupt 
Santo  Domingo,  five  per  cent,  of  the  custom  receipts  to  cover  the 
expenses  of  the  receivership  and  a  certain  amount  to  be  set  aside  to 
pay  off  the  national  debts  and  provide  a  sinking  fund.  The  convention 
further  stipulated  that  Santo  Domingo  could  not  contract  new  public 
indebtedness  without  American  consent,  and  that  the  United  States 
could  intervene  if  conditions  within  the  country  threatened  to  interfere 
with  the  collection  of  the  custom  duties. 

220 


230  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

The  Dominicans  soon  broke  the  former  agreement.  The  govern- 
ment illegally  sold  revenue  stamps  at  a  fraction  of  their  value ;  pagares 
were  issued  at  great  discounts ;  goods  were  purchased  in  the  United 
States  and  abroad  without  being  paid  for  or  legally  sanctioned.  In 
five  years  following  1907  there  were  six  presidents,  including  the  Arch- 
bishop. In  1911  Caceres  was  shot  by  his  own  cabinet  members  be- 
cause they  were  not  allowed  to  graft  enough.  The  United  States 
superintended  the  elections  of  1914,  with  the  understanding  that  all 
parties  should  abide  by  the  result.  A  hard  task  that  for  the  Dominicans. 
Within  a  year  another  revolution  broke  out,  secretly  sponsored  either 
by  the  president  himself  for  the  advantage  it  would  give  the  govern- 
ment in  spending  power,  or  by  the  opposition  party,  led  by  the  minister 
of  war.  This  outbreak  was  soon  suppressed.  In  1916  President 
Jimenez  had  barely  retired  to  his  summer  palace  when  this  same  De- 
giderio  Arias,  a  turbulent  cacique  who  had  been  given  the  war  port- 
folio in  the  hope  of  keeping  him  quiet,  decided  that  his  chief  should 
never  return  to  the  capital.  Supported  by  the  military  forces,  with 
the  police  split  between  the  two  factions,  this  coup  d'etat  was  on  the 
point  of  winning,  when,  at  the  end  of  April,  1916,  the  American  Min- 
ister sent  word  that  there  was  trouble  again  in  Santo  Domingo.  Then 
the  United  States,  which  had  "  offered  its  good  services  "  many  times 
before  and  endured  Dominican  conditions  with  far  too  much  patience, 
decided  to  act.  An  ultimatum  was  sent  to  Arias  announcing  that  the 
United  States  would  no  longer  permit  the  establishment  of  govern- 
ment by  revolution.  Marines  from  Haiti  had  been  landed  at  Fort 
San  Geronimo  with  orders  to  support  the  government  of  Jimenez, 
and  with  his  clandestine  approval,  and  took  the  capital  with  little  diffi- 
culty. The  president  publicly  repudiated  his  secret  agreement,  in  spite 
of  having  everything  in  his  favor,  and  announcing  in  a  bombastic  pro- 
nunciamento  that  his  "  dignity  "  would  not  permit  him  to  endure  a 
foreign  military  occupation,  resigned  with  all  his  government.  For 
this  the  marines  were  duly  thankful ;  it  simplified  the  whole  problem. 

Meanwhile  a  force  had  landed  at  Puerto  Plata  and  at  Monte  Cristi, 
and  fought  their  way  overland,  suffering  considerably  from  snipers  on 
the  way.  Arias,  who  had  escaped  with  all  his  supporters  from  the  un- 
protected side  of  the  city,  hurried  to  the  Cibao  and  attempted  to  hinder 
the  marine  advance,  but  was  forced  to  surrender  with  the  capture  of 
Santiago.  His  power  was  still  paramount  in  the  capital,  however,  and 
he  forced  congress  to  make  Hernandez  y  Carbajal,  who  had  returned 
from  long  exile  in  Cuba,  president.  The  United  States  refused  to 


SANTO  DOMINGO  UNDER  AMERICAN  RULE       231 

recognise  this  illegal  election  and  declined  to  let  the  government  have 
any  money,  with  the  result  that  the  country  was  left  without  rulers. 
Finally  American  military  occupation  was  proclaimed  and  our  forces 
took  over  the  entire  government  of  Santo  Domingo,  a  status  compared 
with  which  the  mere  "  advisory  "  one  of  our  marines  in  Haiti  was  far 
more  complicated,  and  has  remained  so  to  this  day. 

When  the  Americans  took  over  Santo  Domingo  the  republic  was 
millions  in  debt  —  something  like  $40  per  capita,  to  be  exact  —  com- 
pletely bankrupt,  and  the  salaries  of  all  but  the  higher  officials  were 
long  in  arrears.  Now,  after  less  than  four  years  of  occupation,  there 
is  some  $4,000,000  in  the  treasury.  The  new  land  tax  alone  —  which 
it  has  been  impossible  to  duplicate  in  Haiti,  where  laws  are  still  made  by 
a  native  congress, —  has  already  produced  nearly  a  million.  Most  of 
this  goes  back  to  the  municipalities.  The  old  taxes  bore  far  more  on 
the  poor  man  than  on  the  man  of  property.  Moreover,  the  govern- 
ment of  occupation  has  collected  more  than  three  times  as  much  from 
these  older  sources  than  was  the  case  under  native  rule,  chiefly  be- 
cause there  is  no  tax-gatherer's  graft  and  the  friends  of  the  govern- 
ment are  no  longer  let  off  unpaid.  Every  disbursement  is  now  paid  by 
check,  on  voucher  in  duplicate,  and  the  same  man  cannot  buy  and  pay. 
A  few  American  civilians  in  supervising  positions  receive  their  salaries 
from  Dominican  funds  —  and  render  many  times  value  received.  The 
great  bulk  of  the  higher  officials  are  of  no  expense  whatever  to  the  na- 
tives, being  members  of  our  military  forces  drawing  their  pay  from 
the  United  States  treasury. 

The  sovereignty  of  the  Republica  Dominicana  has  never  ceased.  Its 
functions  are  merely  administered  by  representatives  of  the  United 
States  Navy  and  Marine  Corps,  officially  called  "  The  Military  Govern- 
ment of  the  United  States  in  Santo  Domingo."  There  is  no  president 
or  congress.  Even  the  laws  are  made  by  the  military  governor,  an 
American  admiral.  There  have  been  no  elections  since  our  occupation  ; 
all  officials  down  to  the  least  important  are  appointed,  directly  or  in- 
directly, by  the  Americans.  The  latter  control  all  financial  matters 
and  exercise  supervision  over  the  official  acts  even  of  the  smallest 
municipalities.  American  money,  chiefly  torn,  patched,  sewn,  dirty, 
half-illegible  bills,  constitutes  the  circulating  medium.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  republic  has  its  own  schools,  courts,  and  minor  officials. 
The  Dominican  flag  flies  from  all  public  buildings  except  American 
headquarters.  In  short,  in  so  far  as  any  definite  policy  has  ever  been 


'232  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

announced,  we  are  in  Santo  Domingo  to  do  exactly  what  we  did  in 
Cuba. 

The  Americans  found  the  whole  question  of  land  titles  one  of  in- 
credible chaos  and  fraud.  Not  only  were  there  few  definite  deeds 
in  existence,  but  the  country  was  overrun  with  what  are  known  as 
"  peso  titles."  In  the  old  days  the  King  of  Spain  gave  grants  of  land 
without  any  conception  of  the  limits  thereof,  often  supremely  ignorant 
of  its  whereabouts.  Not  infrequently  the  same  parcel  was  given  to 
three  or  four  of  his  faithful  subjects.  The  grantees,  who  in  many 
cases  had  never  seen  their  property,  divided  their  holdings  among 
several  children.  The  latter  had  no  clear  idea  either  of  the  amount 
or  the  location  of  their  property.  So  they  said,  "  Well,  I  think  it  is 
worth  so  many  pesos,"  whereupon  each  child  was  given  his  fraction 
of  that  amount  —  on  paper  —  and  thus  the  subdivision  went  on  through 
many  generations.  Thousands  of  these  "  peso  titles "  were  sold  to 
speculators,  or  to  natives  or  foreigners  who  had  worse  than  hazy 
ideas  of  their  worth.  Then  on  top  of  this  there  grew  up  a  big  business 
in  fake  titles.  As  many  as  four  thousand  have  been  presented,  where 
fewer  than  four  hundred  showed  any  evidence  of  being  real.  More- 
over, the  real  ones,  being  often  hundreds  of  years  old  and  written  by 
men  who  could  neither  spell  nor  find  proper  writing  materials,  were 
more  apt  to  look  spurious  than  did  the  false  ones.  To  clear  up  this 
intolerable  situation  the  Americans  decreed  that  all  land  titles  not 
proved  up  to  a  certain  date  reverted  to  the  government.  The  ruling 
caused  some  injustices,  but  these  were  unavoidable  under  the  cir- 
cumstances and  as  nothing  compared  with  the  old  order  of  things. 
The  introduction  of  a  land  tax  also  has  caused  many  who  might  other- 
wise have  drifted  on  in  the  good  old  tropical  way  to  clear  up  their 
titles.  A  certain  amount  of  litigation  between  the  government  and 
individuals  is  still  going  on,  but  the  whole  problem  is  gradually  com- 
ing to  an  orderly  solution. 

Another  question  which  the  Americans  faced  upon  their  arrival 
was  the  disarming  of  the  country.  It  had  long  been  the  custom  in 
Santo  Domingo  for  even  the  small  boys  to  carry  revolvers.  Among 
the  weapons  were  many  costly  pearl-handled  ones ;  most  of  them  had 
been  manufactured  in  Springfield,  Mass.,  or  Hartford,  Conn.  A  date 
was  set  when  all  firearms  must  be  turned  in  to  the  military  govern- 
ment. The  penalty  for  non-compliance  was  at  first  made  very  severe. 
There  are  men  still  serving  sentence  in  the  road-gangs  of  Santo 
Domingo  for  having  guns  in  their  possession  three  years  ago.  At 


SANTO  DOMINGO  UNDER  AMERICAN  RULE       233 

present  the  standard  punishment  is  six  months'  imprisonment  and 
$300  fine.  With  the  exception  of  the  bandit-infested  province  of 
Seibo,  the  entire  country  has  now  been  completely  cleared  of  firearms, 
at  least  those  in  actual  use.  Some,  to  be  sure,  are  buried  or  hidden 
away  in  the  jungle,  but  time  and  the  rust  of  tropical  climates  will  soon 
take  care  of  those.  The  Americans  burned  whole  roomsful  of  rifles; 
more  than  200,000  revolvers  have  been  thrown  into  the  sea  outside  the 
capital.  To-day  it  is  difficult  even  for  provincial  officials  to  get  per- 
mission to  carry  a  shooting  iron. 

As  in  other  lands  under  temporary  or  permanent  American  rule, 
from  Haiti  to  the  Philippines,  a  native  constabulary  was'  organized. 
The  Guardia  National  of  Santo  Domingo,  consisting  at  present  of  a 
company  of  some  eighty  men  in  each  of  the  fourteen  provinces,  has 
the  same  organization  as  the  Marine  Corps.  Its  members  enlist  for 
three  years,  and  privates  get  $15  a  month.  Their  uniform  lacks  only 
the  hat  ornament  and  somewhat  more  durable  dye-stuffs  to  be  an  ex- 
act copy  of  that  of  our  "  leather-necks."  The  only  difference  in  equip- 
ment is  the  "  Krag  Jorgensen  "  instead  of  the  "  Springfield."  The 
officers  are  marines,  usually  sergeants,  except  in  the  higher  commands 
and  a  very  few  natives  who  have  climbed  to  "  shave-tail "  rank.  All 
commands  are  given  in  English.  A  "  non-com."  can  put  his  men 
through  the  whole  drill  in  that  language,  yet  if  you  ask  him  his  name, 
the  answer  is  almost  certain  to  be  "No  hablo  Ingles."  Unlike  the 
Gendarmerie  of  Haiti  the  Guardia  is  confined  in  its  duties  to  matters 
of  national  defense;  municipal  police  still  keep  order  in  the  cities. 
We  got  the  impression  during  our  short  stay  that  the  Guardia  officers 
were  not  quite  the  equal  of  those  of  the  Gendarmerie.  For  one  thing 
the  pay  is  less  attractive,  though  that  of  the  men  is  fifty  per  cent,  higher. 
Recently,  too,  all  marine  sergeants  holding  commissioned  rank  in  the 
Guardia  have  unwisely  been  reduced  to  privates  during  their  absence 
from  their  permanent  organizations,  with  the  unfortunate  result  that 
the  few  native  lieutenants  get  more  pay  than  their  American  captains, 
unless  the  latter  are  also  commissioned  officers  of  the  Marine  Corps. 
The  native  rank  and  file  of  the  Guardia  have  a  cocky,  half-insolent 
air  quite  foreign  to  their  simpler  fellows  of  Haiti ;  they  look  as  if  they 
would  be  better  fighters,  more  clever  crooks,  and  not  so  easily  dis- 
ciplined. 

The  cacos  of  Santo  Domingo  are  called  gavilleros,  coco  in  that  coun- 
try meaning  merely  thief  or  burglar.  They  are  usually  armed  with 
"pata-mulas  "  (mule  hoofs),  which  are  rifles  that  have  been  cut  down 


234          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

into  revolvers,  partly  because  they  are  too  lazy  to  carry  the  whole  gun, 
partly  because  the  abbreviation  is  easier  to  conceal.  In  the  olden  days 
any  one  with  a  few  hundred  dollars  could  raise  an  "  army,"  especially 
by  making  copious  promises  of  government  jobs  to  everyone  if  —  or 
rather,  when  —  his  side  won.  Not  until  the  Americans  came  were 
these  anti-governmental  groups  called  bandits ;  they  were  dignified  with 
the  title  of  revolutionaries.  Santo  Domingo  had  long  run  more  or 
less  wild ;  many  of  its  men  preferred  taking  to  the  hills  at  fifty  cents 
a  day  with  rations  and  the  possibility  of  loot  to  doing  honest  work 
at  a  dollar  a  day.  As  with  all  Spanish-sired  races,  the  Dominicans 
have  the  gambling  instinct  well  developed.  They  love  the  lotteries 
of  life ;  they  would  rather  take  a  chance  on  winning  some  big  prize 
as  bandits  or  revolutionists  to  toiling  in  safety  at  peaceful  occupations. 
Then,  too,  many  were  forced  to  join  these  outlaw  bands,  lest  their 
houses  be  burned  or  their  families  injured.  The  gavillero  situation 
had  been  bad  before  the  Americans  landed.  It  became  worse  under 
the  occupation,  for  reasons  that  we  shall  see. 

To  begin  with,  Arias  released  nearly  all  the  criminals  in  the  country 
during  his  revolt  against  the  Jimenez  government.  These  quickly 
turned  bandits;  later  on  they  pretended  to  be  patriots  fighting  the 
American  occupation.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  majority  of  them 
were  fighting  for  food,  rather  than  for  either  political  or  patriotic 
reasons,  but  bombast  is  one  of  the  chief  qualities  of  the  Latin-American. 
The  forces  of  occupation  might  in  some  ways  have  handled  this  bandit 
situation  better  than  they  did ;  largely  because  of  ignorance  of  local 
customs,  partly  because  of  inefficiency  and  a  certain  amount  of  brutal- 
ity, they  made  something  of  a  mess  of  it,  or  at  least  let  it  become  more 
serious  than  it  need  have  done. 

Two  regiments  of  marines  are  engaged  in  the  occupation  of  teaching 
the  Dominicans  how  to  live  without  lawlessness  —  a  scant  5000  of  them 
among  a  population  of  750,000.  Unfortunately  there  are  flaws  in  all 
organizations.  There  are  marine  commanders  in  Santo  Domingo  so 
just  and  broad-minded  that  they  are  almost  loved  by  the  naturally 
hostile  population;  there  were  others  who  have  little  real  conception 
of  their  duties.  The  rascally,  brutal,  worthless,  "  Diamond  Dick " 
class  of  American  sometimes  gets  into  the  Marine  Corps  as  into  every- 
thing else  and  tends  to  destroy  the  good  name  of  the  majority.  Boys 
brought  up  on  dime  novels  and  the  movies  saw  at  last  a  chance  to 
imitate  their  favorite  heroes  and  kill  people  with  impunity:  some  of 
them,  too,  were  Southerners,  to  whom  the  Dominicans  after  all  were 


SANTO  DOMINGO  UNDER  AMERICAN  RULE       235 

only  "  niggers."  The  great  majority  of  the  forces  of  occupation  were 
well  meaning  young  fellows  who  often  lacked  experience  in  distinguish- 
ing outlaws  from  honest  citizens,  with  the  result  that  painful  injustices 
were  sometimes  committed. 

These  ignorant,  or  movie-trained,  young  fellows  were  sent  out  into 
the  hills  to  hunt  bandits.  They  came  upon  a  hut,  found  it  unoccupied, 
and  touched  a  match  to  the  nipe  thatch.  They  probably  thought  such 
a  hovel  was  of  no  importance  anyway,  even  if  it  were  not  a  bandit 
haunt,  whereas  it  contained  all  the  earthly  possessions  of  a  harmless 
family.  In  their  ignorance  of  local  customs  they  could  not  know  that 
the  entire  household  was  out  working  in  their  jungle  yuca-garden. 
Or  they  found  only  the  women  and  children  at  home,  and  burned  the 
house  because  these  could  not  explain  where  their  man  was.  Or  again, 
they  met  a  man  on  the  trail  and  asked  him  his  business,  and  because 
he  could  not  understand  their  atrocious  imitation  of  Spanish,  or  they 
his  reply,  they  shot  him  to  be  on  the  safe  side.  In  still  other  places  they 
burned  the  houses  of  innocent  accomplices,  because  bandits  had  com- 
mandeered food  and  lodging  there.  If  one  can  believe  half  the  stories 
that  are  current  in  all  circles  throughout  Santo  Domingo,  the  Germans 
in  Belgium  had  nothing  on  some  of  our  own  "  leather-necks." 

A  parish  priest  of  Seibo,  who  seemed,  if  anything,  friendly  to  the 
occupation,  told  me  of  several  cases  of  incredible  brutality  of  which 
he  had  personal  knowledge.  He  could  not  divulge  the  secrets  of  the 
confessional,  but  he  could  assure  me  that  many  of  the  victims  had  been 
innocent  even  of  hostile  thoughts.  The  Guardia,  he  asserted,  included 
some  of  the  worst  rascals,  thieves,  and  assassins  in  the  country,  men 
far  worse  than  the  gavilleros,  and  these  often  egged  the  naive  Ameri- 
cans on  to  vent  their  own  private  hates.  Scarcely  a  month  before  a  sad 
personal  experience-  had  befallen  him.  On  Christmas  Day  he  had 
gone  with  acolytes  to  another  town  to  attend  a  fiesta,  when  a  drunken 
marine  had  fired  his  rifle  twice  into  the  wattled  hut  where  it  was 
being  held  and  killed  a  boy  of  ten  who  was  at  that  moment  swinging 
the  censer. 

I  cannot  vouch  for  all  the  padre's  statements,  but  rumors  of  this 
kind  were  strikingly  prevalent  among  natives  and  Americans  all  over 
Santo  Domingo.  On  the  other  hand  we  must  remember  that  the 
bandit-hunters  often  have  no  certain  means  of  telling  a  gavillcro  from 
a  "  good  citizen,"  and  they  cannot  always  afford  to  give  a  man  the 
benefit  of  the  doubt.  One  is  as  apt  as  the  other  to  look  like  an  honest, 
simple,  harmless  fellow,  and  there  have  been  sad  mistakes  on  the 


236          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

side  of  leniency  also,  which  have  naturally  led  to  over-caution.  The 
Dominican  is  quite  versatile  enough  to  be  a  bandit  one  day  and  to  be 
found  scratching  the  ground  of  his  jungle  garden  with  his  machete 
the  next.  Captured  gavilleros  have  boasted  that  they  hid  their  guns 
in  a  cane-field  when  a  hostile  force  appeared,  came  out  and  helped  the 
marines  unsaddle,  drank  a  round  with  them  in  the  neighboring  licoreria, 
and  recovered  their  weapons  as  soon  as  the  hunters  had  taken  to  the 
trail  again.  The  Guardia,  too,  has  not  always  been  free  from  spies. 
The  difficulties  of  the  situation,  and  the  necessity  of  a  wide  knowledge 
of  local  customs  and  conditions  on  the  part  of  those  sent  to  handle 
it,  is  exemplified  by  the  miscarriage  of  a  plan  to  clear  a  certain  district 
of  Seibo  of  outlaws.  The  government  of  occupation  ordered  all  "  good 
inhabitants  "  to  come  into  the  towns  on  a  certain  day,  so  that  the  bad 
ones  might  be  more  easily  corralled.  But  the  gavilleros  have  a  better 
news  service  than  those  who  have  no  particular  reason  to  keep  their 
ears  to  the  ground.  The  former  learned  of  the  order,  concealed  their 
weapons,  and  hastened  into  the  villages,  with  the  result  that  those  who 
were  shot  were  chiefly  honest,  simple  peasants. 

There  have  been  several  battles  of  importance  between  the  marines 
and  the  gavilleros  since  the  occupation.  The  latter  are  more  worthy 
adversaries  than  the  Haitian  cacos,  though  the  defeat  of  a  band  of  four 
hundred  by  a  score  of  Americans  is  not  considered  an  extraordinary 
feat.  Thanks  either  to  his  Spanish  antecedents  or  to  his  revolutionary 
history,  the  Dominican  has  a  ferocity  and  a  desprecio  of  human  life 
that  makes  it  unwise  to  be  compassionate.  More  than  thirty  marines 
have  been  killed  in  Santo  Domingo,  as  against  only  four  in  Haiti. 
One  band  has  announced  a  determination  to  completely  exterminate 
the  white  foreigners,  and  makes  a  practice  of  horribly  mutilating  the 
dead  and  wounded.  A  persistent  rumor  has  it  that  one  of  its  leaders 
is  an  American. 

The  story  of  the  killing  of  the  bandit  chieftain  of  Santo  Domingo 
is  not  so  heroic  as  the  extermination  of  Charlemagne  in  Haiti  —  nor  as 
definite.  Vicentico  and  his  men  had  overrun  almost  the.entire  province 
of  Seibo.  In  July,  1917,  one  account  has  it,  a  gunnery  sergeant  who 
spoke  imperfect  Spanish  went  into  his  district  unarmed  and  in  "  civics  " 
and  spent  a  week  in  winning  the  chief's  confidence.  The  Americans, 
he  told  him,  had  lost  hope  of  defeating  so  expert  a  warrior  and  would 
make  him  a  general  and  chief  of  the  Guardia,  with  places  for  the  best 
of  his  men,  if  he  would  disband  his  forces  and  support  the  occupation. 
Another  version  is  that  the  real  go-between  was  a  "  Turk "  shop- 


SANTO  DOMINGO  UNDER  AMERICAN  RULE       237 

keeper  who  had  known  him  in  other  days.  Questions  of  individual 
glory  aside,  Vicentico  at  length  set  out  with  seventy  picked  men  to 
report  to  the  marine  commander.  On  the  way  he  was  suddenly  startled 
to  hear  one  of  the  wild  birds  of  Seibo  utter  its  peculiar  shriek  in  a 
tree-top  above  him. 

"  You  are  betraying  me ! "  cried  the  chieftain,  whirling  upon  the 
"  Turk  "  —  or  the  sergeant  —  and  covering  him  with  his  "  pata-mulas." 
"  That  bird  has  never  failed  to  warn  me  of  danger." 

The  emissary,  who  was  evidently  gifted  with  a  superhuman  tongue, 
managed  to  talk  his  way  back  into  the  confidence  of  the  outlaw,  and  the 
journey  proceeded.  Arrived  at  the  American  headquarters,  Vicentico 
marched  haughtily  in  upon  the  marine  colonel,  his  swarthy  face  twitch- 
ing with  triumph,  and  announced  himself  ready  to  take  over  the  com- 
mand of  the  Guardia. 

"  You  are  under  arrest,"  said  the  colonel,  dryly. 

"  Caramba !  "  cried  the  outlaw,  while  a  detachment  of  marines  dis- 
armed his  seventy  followers,  "  I  knew  I  should  have  listened  to  that 
bird!" 

Just  what  happened  after  that  is  not  very  clear,  except  that  it  was 
nothing  of  which  to  be  particularly  proud.  One  version  runs  that  the 
gunnery  sergeant  entered  the  outlaw's  cell  one  night  and  told  him,  amid 
curses  and  crocodile  tears,  that  his  superiors  had  repudiated  their 
promise,  but  that  he  would  redeem  his  own  unintentional  treachery  in 
the  matter  by  helping  the  bandit  to  escape  at  once  —  whereupon  guards 
carefully  posted  outside  met  him  with  a  volley  sanctioned  by  the  ley  de 
fuga  of  his  own  race.  Another  termination  of  the  tale  has  it  that  a 
group  of  marine  officers,  "  lit  up  after  a  big  party,"  staggered  to  the 
prison  and  vindicated  the  loss  of  some  of  their  comrades  by  shooting 
the  outlaw  with  his  handcuffs  still  on,  and  without  even  allowing  him 
time  to  call  a  priest.  Just  how  much  truth  there  is  in  these  varying 
accounts,  or  combinations  of  the  two,  will  probably  remain  a  mystery, 
but  even  the  marines  themselves  do  not  often  boast  of  the  killing  of 
Vicentico. 

Chronic  pessimists  and  sworn  enemies  of  the  occupation  assert  that 
the  Americans  have  made  ten  bandits  for  every  one  they  have  killed. 
Without  taking  this  statement  at  par,  there  is  at  least  a  grain  of  truth 
in  the  complementary  assertion  that  the  killing  of  Vicentico  made  all 
Seibo  turn  gavilleros.  In  some  sections  only  women,  children,  and  old 
men  are  seen ;  the  young  bucks  have  all  taken  to  the  hills.  The  leaders 
that  are  left  have  no  confidence  in  Americans,  especially  those  in  a 


238          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

marine  uniform,  and  they  will  no  longer  enter  into  negotiations  of 
any  nature.  The  province  wants  revenge  for  what  it  considers  the 
treacherous  betrayal  of  one  of  its  popular  heroes.  We  should  remember 
the  time-honored  Spanish  attitude  towards  bandits  —  something  mere 
warriors,  with  no  time  to  study  history,  cannot  be  expected  to  know. 
The  government  of  Spain  has  always  been  more  or  less  an  oppressor 
of  the  common  people;  those  who  rise  against  it,  either  singly  or  in 
groups,  are  looked  upon  somewhat  as  champions  of  the  helpless  masses. 
The  favorite  heroes  of  Spanish  dramas  to  this  day  are  bandidos,  and 
they  are  always  equally  noted  for  their  absolute  indifference  to  personal 
danger  and  for  their  knightly  code  of  honor,  to  say  nothing  of  their 
unfailing  generosity  toward  the  poor.  It  is  not  hard,  therefore,  to 
understand  why  los  Americanos  fell  far  down  the  moral  scale  of  Seibo 
province  by  their  uncaballeresco  treatment  of  Vicentico. 

If  I  may  continue  this  unprejudiced  explanation  of  things  as  they 
seemed  to  be  in  Santo  Domingo  at  the  beginning  of  1920  without  giving 
the  false  impression  that  the  great  majority  of  our  forces  of  occupation 
are  not  a  credit  to  the  land  of  their  birth,  I  would  add  a  word  about 
the  effect  of  personal  conduct.  A  few  marines,  some  officers  among 
them,  vary  the  monotony  of  their  assignment  by  starting  irregular 
households ;  a  somewhat  larger  number  take  undue  advantage  of  their 
isolation  from  our  new  and  not  too  popular  constitutional  amendment. 
The  former  lapse  would  attract  but  little  attention  in  Santo  Domingo, 
where  it  is  almost  a  national  custom,  were  it  not  an  American  habit 
to  boast  ourselves  superior  to  other  races  in  such  matters,  at  least  in 
view-point.  The  result  is  a  frequent  sneering  whisper  of  "  hypocrites." 
As  to  the  second,  like  all  Latin  races  the  Dominican  is  seldom  a  tee- 
totaler, but  he  is  even  more  seldom  seen  under  the  influence  of  liquor, 
at  leasi  publicly.  In  a  land  where  any  man  of  standing  loses  caste  by 
the  slightest  evidence  of  intoxication,  the  effect  on  the  popular  mind 
of  what  to  their  self-appointed  rulers  is  merely  a  "  little  celebration  " 
is  extremely  unfortunate.  The  result  of  these  things,  of  a  certain 
amount  of  crude  autocracy,  and  a  tendency  to  let  red  tape  have  the 
precedence  over  common  sense,  is  that  our  forces  of  occupation  are 
far  less  popular  in  Santo  Domingo  than  they  could  be. 

There  has  been  a  growing  tendency  on  the  part  of  the  Dominicans 
to  show  their  enmity  openly.  Several  outbreaks  at  dances  and  fiestas, 
ranging  from  individual  encounters  to  near-riots,  have  indicated  the 
feeling  against  Americans.  Marine  officers  dancing  with  Dominican 


SANTO  DOMINGO  UNDER  AMERICAN  RULE       239 

jirls  have  been  subjected  to  unpleasant  scenes.  Our  men  are  less 
Dften  invited  to  native  clubs  than  formerly.  A  less  serious  and  more 
imusing  index,  almost  universal  south  of  the  Rio  Grande,  is  the  increas- 
ng  refusal  to  call  us  Americans.  Several  newspapers  have  perma- 
icntly  adopted  the  clumsy  adjective  "  Estadunidense."  If  our  South- 
ern neighbors  have  their  way  I  suppose  we  shall  soon  be  calling 
ourselves  "  Unitedstatians,"  or,  as  a  fellow-countryman  who  has  lived 
50  long  among  them  as  to  admit  their  contention  always  writes  it, 
'  Usians." 

What  we  need  in  such  jobs  as  that  in  Santo  Domingo  are  "  long  time 
nen,"  soldiers  who  have  learned  by  experience  that  the  task  is  rather 
Dne  of  education  than  of  oppression.  I  should  like  to  see  all  those 
-emoved  from  our  forces  of  occupation  who  have  not  a  proper  respect 
for  Dominicans ;  not  an  unbounded  respect  —  I  have  n't  that  myself  — 
DUt  who  at  least  admit  that  our  wards  are  human  beings,  with  their 
3wn  rights  and  customs,  and  not  merely  "  Spigs "  and  "  niggers." 
There  is  too  much  of  that  "  nigger  "  attitude  among  the  more  ignorant 
rlass  of  Americans,  who  too  often  make  the  color-line  a  protection 
igainst  their  own  shortcomings. 

"  Mac  "  —  or  "  Big  George,"  for  that  matter  —  is  an  excellent  ex- 
imple  of  the  kind  of  American  we  want  in  such  places.  An  early 
:raining  that  has  taught  self-control  as  well  as  the  power  to  command, 
i  long  enough  residence  to  speak  Spanish  perfectly,  with  all  its  local 
dioms,  a  bit  of  Irish  blarney,  which  goes  a  long  way  with  these  simple 
ind  really  good-hearted  people,  a  due  knowledge  and  regard  for  their 
:ustoms  and  point  of  view,  yet  with  a  sense  of  humor  to  see  and 
mjoy,  rather  than  be  annoyed  by,  their  ridiculous  side  —  in  short,  a 
real  American,  by  which  I  do  not  mean  the  boisterous,  bullying  fellow 
who  sees  no  good  outside  the  United  States,  but  one  who  can  adapt 
limself  to  all  conditions,  return  courtesy  for  courtesy,  concise  and 
straight-forward,  living  up  to  the  law  in  every  particular,  always  giving 
:ommon  sense  the  right  of  way  over  red  tape,  kindly  worded  in  all  his 
dealings,  yet  always  letting  possible  recalcitrants  sense  the  revolver 
loaded  and  cocked  under  his  —  the  government's  —  coat.  Such  are  the 
men  needed  for  these  jobs,  not  the  haughty  autocrat  nor  the  ignorant 
"  rough-neck." 

The  majority  of  Dominicans  object  to  American  occupation  for  sev- 
eral reasons.  A  list  of  the  most  potent  might  run  something  as  follows : 
That  of  the  bad  boy  made  to  behave  himself;  the  resentment  of 
politicians  who  have  lost  their  hold  on  the  public  purse ;  the  knowledge 


240          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

that  the  Americans  consider  themselves  a  superior  race ;  the  sharpness 
of  the  American  color-line ;  the  military  censorship ;  "  unconstitutional  " 
American  military  courts ;  the  order  against  carrying  arms ;  the  alleged 
breaking  by  the  government  of  occupation  of  the  Dominican  law  re- 
stricting immigration.  There  are  others,  but  they  are  unimportant  as 
compared  to  these. 

The  first  two  or  three  need  no  explanation.  Few  Americans  realize 
how  irksome  is  our  attitude  on  the  negro  question  in  a  country  where 
not  one  inhabitant  in  ten  can  show  an  unquestionable  Caucasian  pedi- 
gree. Even  the  Dominicans  have  a  color-line;  I  have  yet  to  find  a 
country  inhabited  by  negroes  that  has  not;  but  they  see  no  justice  in 
ranking  a  well-educated,  influential  citizen  of  more  than  the  American 
average  of  culture  in  the  same  socially  impossible  category  as  an  illit- 
erate black  dock  laborer,  simply  because  his  hair  is  curly  and  his  com- 
plexion slightly  dulled.  As  to  the  censorship,  the  occupation  calls  it 
excessively  lenient ;  Dominican  writers  find  it  "  intolerable."  That  it  is 
stupid  goes  without  saying ;  it  seems  to  be  a  universal  rule  that  a  censor 
must  be  supremely  ignorant  of  literature  and  forbidden  even  to  have  a 
speaking  acquaintance  with  the  classics.  Yet  with  an  uninstructed, 
inflammable  population  and  a  pest  of  irresponsible,  self-seeking  scrib- 
blers, no  military  occupation  could  exist  without  taking  measures  to 
curtail  printed  sedition.  This  is  a  rock  on  which  the  rather  popular 
military  governor  and  even  the  best  class  of  natives  have  split  asunder. 
The  Comision  Consultiva,  headed  by  the  Archbishop,  that  was  formed 
to  give  the  admiral  unofficial  advice  on  Dominican  matters  beyond  his 
natural  ken,  resigned  at  the  beginning  of  1920  because  the  "  insupport- 
able "  censorship  was  not  wholly  abolished,  instead  of  being  merely 
softened. 

The  Cortes  Prebostales  come  in  for  a  large  share  of  Dominican 
invective.  The  American  military  courts,  they  protest,  sometimes  try 
and  punish  those  who  have  been  acquitted  by  the  native  courts,  and  vice 
versa.  It  is  unconstitutional,  they  cry.  True  enough,  but  so  is  it  un- 
constitutional to  have  made  it  necessary  for  a  foreign  military  force 
to  assume  the  government  of  the  country.  Courts  martial  are  resorted 
to  only  in  cases  of  carrying  arms,  insurrections,  assaults  on  members 
of  the  forces  of  occupation,  and  sales  of  liquor  to  men  in  uniform.  It 
takes  no  great  amount  of  thinking  to  see  how  impossible  it  would  be 
to  have  such  matters  passed  upon  by  Dominican  judges.  For  one  thing, 
none  of  them  are  covered  by  the  civil  laws  of  Santo  Domingo. 

It  is  naturally  irksome  to  a  man  who  has  always  considered  a  revolver 


241 

as  a  sign  of  caste,  an  adornment  similar  to  a  diamond  ring  or  a  gold- 
headed  cane,  to  be  forced  to  dispense  with  this  portion  of  his  attire. 
But  not  much  can  be  said  for  the  plaintiff  in  this  case.  There  is  more 
reason  for  sympathy  with  the  countrymen  who  cannot  even  have  a 
shotgun  to  kill  the  crows,  woodpeckers,  guinea-fowls,  and  parrots  that 
destroy  his  crops.  The  man,  too,  is  entitled  to  a  hearing  who  has 
hundreds  of  laborers  under  his  command  in  the  wilder  sections  of  the 
country,  or  who  lives  on  the  edge  of  the  bandit  zone,  yet  who  can  have 
nothing  better  than  a  machete  with  which  to  protect  himself  or  his 
family.  Our  experience  of  the  close  resemblance  between  gavilleros 
and  respectable  citizens,  however,  has  sadly  shattered  our  confidence, 
and  it  is  difficult  even  for  native  officials  whose  duties  carry  them  about 
the  country  to  get  permission  to  dress  themselves  up  in  firearms. 

I  have  already  spoken  of  the  dog-in-the-manger  attitude  of  the 
Dominicans  on  the  subject  of  immigration.  Their  complaints  on  this 
score  have  become  less  acute  since  the  military  government  promulgated 
the  recent  decree  of  registration  and  proof  of  self-support  for  alien 
laborers.  There  is  still  some  grumbling,  however.  Native  law  forbids 
the  bringing  in  of  negro  or  Oriental  workmen  "  except  in  cases  of 
emergency."  The  Americans,  they  assert,  have  permitted  too  many 
blacks  from  the  neighboring  islands  to  take  employment  in  the  great 
cane-fields  of  the  South.  Yet  surely  the  harvesting  of  sugar  is  an 
"  emergency  "  to  the  unsweetened  world  of  to-day.  Also,  the  Ameri- 
can steamship  line  that  monopolizes  the  carrying  of  goods  to  and  from 
Santo  Domingo  brings  stevedores  from  Turk's  Island  and  other  points 
to  work  the  cargoes,  dropping  them  again  at  their  homes,  and  the 
Dominicans  complain  that  this  lowers  their  standard  of  living.  The 
fact  is  that  the  native  laborers  are  not  merely  indolent;  they  are  dis- 
tressingly independent.  About  Thursday  a  bunch  of  them  get  together 
and  say,  "  We  have  enough  to  live  on  until  Tuesday.  Why  should 
we  work?"  So  off  goes  the  bunch  on  a  dance-fiesta-cockfight  spree 
and  the  canes  wither  in  the  field  or  cargoes  lie  untouched  in  the  hold 
or  on  the  dock.  The  workmen  of  the  South,  in  particular,  have  the 
reputation  of  being  the  best  time-killers  in  the  world.  The  great  sugar 
centrals  of  that  region  could  not  exist  without  the  privilege  of  bringing 
in  Haitian  or  British  West  Indian  laborers. 

Abhorring  steady  labor  as  he  does,  the  Dominican  has  been  quick 
to  catch  the  drift  of  modern  trade  unionism  in  demanding  exorbitant 
wages  for  indifferent  work.  At  the  recent  labor  conference  in  Wash- 
ington Santo  Domingo  was  represented  by  the  mulatto  son  of  a  German, 


242          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

formerly  governor  of  Puerto  Plata,  and  a  man  who  could  not  but  have 
chuckled  at  his  own  humor  in  addressing  the  conference  as  "  my  fellow 
workmen."  Denied  the  privilege  of  holding  office  in  the  old  style  under 
American  rule,  these  professional  politicians  are  attempting  to  get  a 
strangle-hold  on  the  public  purse  by  forming  labor  unions  and  appealing 
to  the  American  Federation  of  Labor  to  bring  its  powerful  influence 
to  bear  on  the  military  government.  The  parade  of  a  score  of  gremios 
during  our  stay  in  the  Dominican  capital,  nearly  all  of  them  formed 
within  six  months,  shows  what  success  is  attending  their  efforts.  The 
labor  dictator  of  America  seems  to  have  fallen  into  the  trap.  He  re- 
quests that  the  laborers  of  Santo  Domingo  be  given  "  full  liberty  of 
action,"  which  sounds  to  those  of  us  who  have  been  there  like  permis- 
sion to  take  a  gun  and  turn  bandit.  M'easured  in  dollars  and  cents 
the  wages  of  the  Dominican  laborer  are  not  high ;  balanced  against  the 
work  he  actually  accomplishes  they  show  him  rather  the  exploiter  than 
the  victim.  No  one  on  earth,  least  of  all  the  occupation,  is  hindering 
him  from  doing  a  good  day's  work  and  getting  reasonably  well  paid  for 
it  —  except  his  own  indolence,  which  in  the  end  is  apt  to  leave  him 
swamped  beneath  foreign  immigration  in  spite  of  any  political  manipu- 
lations. 

Among  those  I  talked  with  about  their  country's  "  wrongs  "  was 
Deqiderio  Arias,  the  former  war  minister  who  added  the  last  straw  to 
American  patience.  He  runs  a  pathetic  little  cigar  factory  in  Santiago 
now,  sleeping  on  a  cot  in  one  corner  of  it,  and  professes,  I  hesitate  to 
report,  a  great  friendship  for  "  Big  George."  A  proud,  rather  ignorant 
mulatto,  with  perhaps  a  touch  of  Indian  blood,  a  commanding  manner 
still  despite  his  reverses  and  the  high  degree  of  outward  courtesy  of 
all  his  people,  he  is,  or  pretends  to  be,  fairly  well  satisfied  with  American 
occupation.  All  he  wanted,  he  asserts,  was  internal  peace  for  his 
beloved  native  land,  and  the  marines  have  brought  that,  or  nearly  so, 
But  he  regrets  that  the  Americans  do  not  study  the  customs  and 
"  psycholology  "  of  the  Dominican  people,  rather  than  jumping  to  the 
conclusion  that  what  is  good  for  themselves  is  unquestionably  good  for 
all  other  races. 

Then  there  was  Santo  Domingo's  chief  novelist  and  literary  light,  the 
pride  of  La  Vega.  He  is  perhaps  the  most  outspoken  opponent  of  the 
occupation  in  the  country.  "  Cuba  and  Porto  Rico  have  always  been 
colonies,"  he  frothed,  "  and  are  used  to  having  a  rule  of  force  thrust 
upon  them.  But  Santo  Domingo  won  her  own  independence  single- 


243 

handed  and  what  we  want,  what  we  must  have,  is  LIBERTY!"  He 
did  not  add  that  the  meaning  of  the  word  in  this  particular  case  was  the 
right  of  continual  revolution,  but  it  was  easy  to  supply  that  footnote  for 
him.  His  wrath  was  scornful  toward  those  of  his  fellow-countrymen 
who  had  "  debased  themselves  "  to  accept  office  under  the  occupation, 
and  he  asserted  that  all  who  had  done  so  were  "  the  dregs  of  our  national 
life."  The  novelist's  testimony  was  somewhat  discounted,  however, 
by  "  Mac's  "  characterization  of  him  as  a  "  one-cylinder  crook,"  who 
had  been  removed  from  public  office  for  selling  cancelled  revenue 
stamps. 

The  parish  priest  of  Seibo  was  far  more  favorable  to  the  occupation. 
A  native  Dominican,  without  a  hint  of  the  asceticism  of  the  French 
priests  in  Haiti,  with  a  generous  waist-line  and  the  face  of  one  who 
enjoys  to  the  full  all  the  good  things  of  life,  he  had  the  ripe  judgment 
of  a  man  of  the  world,  rather  than  the  view-point  of  the  cloister. 
All  intellectual  Dominicans,  he  explained,  are  ashamed  that  it  was 
necessary,  yet  they  know  it  is  for  their  own  good,  that  the  Ameri- 
cans have  "  annexed "  the  country.  The  lesson  has  been  hard  to 
bear,  but  it  was  unavoidable,  and  now  they  have  learned  it  so  well 
that  they  "will  never  do  it  again"  —  it  sounded  like  the  cry  of  a  bad 
boy  under  the  paternal  strap  —  if  only  we  will  let  them  govern  them- 
selves and  still  hold  a  menacing  hand  over  them.  It  is  the  old  Latin- 
American  cry  for  protection  without  responsibility.  Every  Dominican 
would  bless  the  United  States  if  the  marines  were  withdrawn  and  an 
advisory  governor  left.  They  would  never  again  steal  public  office  or 
government  funds.  They  have  been  taught  that  continual  revolutions 
are  not  a  mere  pastime,  but  a  crime.  The  intellectual  Americans  of  the 
occupation  had  done  much  good,  he  asserted,  but  their  works  had  been 
largely  offset  by  those  of  the  other  class.  For  all  the  violence  he  had 
reported,  he  seemed  to  have  no  hard  feelings  against  us,  but  he  felt 
that  the  time  had  come  for  us  to  go  away.  He  "  had  heard  it  said  " 
that  the  gazilleros  would  return  to  their  canucos  and  settle  down  again 
as  soon  as  the  Americans  leave.  Many  of  them  were  simple  rascals 
who  had  no  sense  of  patriotism  whatever,  but  only  a  desire  to  live  by 
robbery  and  plunder.  They  were  as  apt  to  kill  their  own  countrymen 
as  Americans,  rather  more  so,  in  fact,  for  the  latter  went  armed  and 
the  Dominicans  could  not.  Yet  many  of  them  had  been  driven  to  the 
hills  by  force  of  circumstances  —  by  threats  from  the  real  bandits, 
by  the  marines  mistaking  an  innocent  family  for  gavillero  sympathizers, 
or  a  man  was  falsely  given  a  bad  name  and  dared  not  come  in  and  give 


244          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

himself  up,  for  fear  of  suffering  the  fate  of  Vicentico.  Once  these 
unwilling  outlaws  abandoned  the  fight  the  rest  would  have  no  choice 
but  to  disband. 

It  is  difficult  to  admit,  however,  that  Santo  Domingo  is  now  ready 
to  govern  itself,  not  because  there  are  no  educated  and  honest  men 
in  the  country,  but  because  these  cannot  get  into  power.  Force  rules ; 
just  elections  are  impossible.  As  in  all  Latin- America,  with  few 
exceptions,  parties  depend  upon  and  take  the  name  of  their  leader. 
Principles  do  not  interest  the  rank  and  file  in  the  least.  In  the  old 
days  the  president  always  appointed  a  military  man  as  provincial  leader, 
that  his  "  party  "  might  not  assert  any  signs  of  independence.  Every 
district  had  its  little  local  cacique,  or  tribal  chief.  Elections  were  two- 
day  affairs.  Woolly  countrymen  were  brought  in  from  the  hills  and 
voted  at  once.  The  cacique  got  them  shaved  and  voted  them  again ;  got 
them  a  hair-cut  and  voted  them  again ;  gave  them  a  new  shirt  and  voted 
them  again.  On  the  second  day  a  half-dozen  more  disguises  preceded 
their  repeated  visits  to  the  polls.  It  is  hard  to  believe  that  a  bare  four 
years  of  occupation  have  completely  cured  the  Dominicans  of  such 
habits.  The  Americans,  in  fact,  have  never  yet  attempted  to  hold  an 
election,  hence  there  has  been  no  new  ideal  held  up  to  them  in  this 
matter.  Under  the  old  regime  judges  divided  fines  among  themselves, 
and  it  cost  much  effort  to  get  them  to  give  up  this  privilege.  Now 
they  are  apt  to  give  ludicrously  light  fines,  because  it  all  goes  to  the 
internal  revenue,  in  which  they  are  not  personally  interested.  Like  a 
wayward  boy  who  was  never  taught  to  govern  himself,  but  was  merely 
exploited  by  a  heartless  stepfather,  from  whom  he  finally  ran  away, 
Santo  Domingo  has  no  real  conception  of  how  to  conduct  itself  in 
political  matters,  and  up  to  the  present  occupation  no  one  has  ever 
attempted  to  teach  it  what  it  never  learned  from  Spain  or  experience. 

Some  Dominicans  would  be  satisfied  with  an  American  protectorate, 
provided  they  could  have  their  own  congress  and  a  certain  show  of 
autonomy.  Many  thoughtful  citizens  want  us  to  remain  until  a  new 
generation  has  been  trained  to  administer  their  affairs.  So  far  little 
such  training  has  been  done,  and  it  will  take  a  long  time  to  break  them 
of  their  "  Spig  "  habits.  Cuba  and  Porto  Rico  have  always  been  used 
to  obeying  the  law,  yet  they  have  scarcely  yet  approached  proper  self- 
government.  Santo  Domingo  has  always  run  more  or  less  wild;  she 
needs  a  complete  new  standard  of  honor  and  morals.  Among  other 
things  this  will  require  at  least  twenty-five  years  of  good  elementary 
schooling.  Nor  should  it  be  a  hesitant,  over-kindly  schooling.  The 


SANTO  DOMINGO  UNDER  AMERICAN  RULE       245 

text-books  adopted  should  contain  such  pertinent  queries  as :  "  What 
are  the  chief  faults  of  Dominicans  (of  Latin-Americans  in  general) 
which  it  is  necessary  to  correct  before  they  can  take  their  proper  place 
in  the  modern  world?  Answer:  We  must  get  rid  of  Caudillismo,  of 
personal  instead  of  political  parties  "  —  and  so  on,  with  what  may  seem 
offensive  frankness.  Not  only  should  Americans  remain  long  enough 
in  Santo  Domingo  to  train  a  new  generation,  but  we  should  tell  them 
at  once  that  such  is  our  firm  intention.  The  rumor  that  our  troops 
are  about  to  be  withdrawn  is  always  going  around  the  country,  leaving 
no  one  a  certain  peg  on  which  to  hang  his  hat.  Remember  how  we 
hate  the  uncertainty  of  a  presidential  year.  There  should  be  a  procla- 
mation by  our  own  federal  government  to  the  effect  that  we  are  going 
to  remain  for  many  years  —  I  should  say  fifty,  until  all  the  present 
generation  has  disappeared  —  and  that  there  is  no  use  kicking  mean- 
while against  the  inevitable.  Instead  of  that  the  present  governor 
tells  them  that  he  will  do  all  in  his  power  to  get  them  a  civil  government 
soon  and  to  have  the  troops  withdrawn,  remaining  perhaps  as  a  civil 
governor.  I  do  not  believe  they  are  ready  for  any  such  move,  certainly 
not  to  handle  their  own  finances,  which  is  what  they  wish  above  all  to 
do.  Bit  by  bit  they  should  be  initiated  into  the  mysteries  of  real  self- 
government,  but  we  should  avoid  the  error  we  made  in  Cuba,  and  to 
some  extent  in  Porto  Rico,  of  graduating  them  before  they  have  finished 
the  grammar  grades.  If  the  unborn  generation  can  be  reared  without 
political  pollution  from  the  living,  there  is  promise  even  in  such  a  race 
as  the  Dominican.  However,  have  you  ever  set  out  on  a  journey 
astride  a  mongrel  native  horse  and  expected  him  to  keep  up  with  a 
thoroughbred  ? 

The  military  occupation  has  made  mistakes ;  all  military  governments 
do.  But  they  are  by  no  means  so  many  nor  so  serious  as  those  the 
Dominicans  made  themselves.  There  have  been  cases  of  arbitrariness, 
snap  judgments,  and  injustice,  but  on  the  whole  American  rule  is  just, 
justifiable,  and  well  done.  Some  of  the  trouble  comes  from  the  fact 
that  navy  youths  of  no  experience  are  given  important  secretarias  that 
require  men  of  exceedingly  mature  judgment  —  though,  to  be  sure,  the 
governing  of  Santo  Domingo,  with  its  bare  750,000  inhabitants,  is  little 
more  than  a  mayor's  job,  except  in  extent  of  territory.  A  second 
drawback  is  that  the  most  important  posts  are  in  the  hands  of  men 
who  know  not  a  word  of  Spanish  and  must  do  all  their  work  through 
interpreters,  usually  of  the  politician  stripe,  with  results  easily  imagined. 


246          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

There  is  no  reason  whatever  why  graduates  of  Annapolis  or  West  Point 
should  not  know  what  has  become  so  important  a  language  to  their 
calling.  Did  anyone  ever  hear  of  a  German  professional  officer  who 
did  not  speak  at  least  English  and  French  fluently  ?  Some  of  the  time 
that  is  now  given  to  "  social  functions  "  and  the  learning  of  afternoon- 
tea  manners  could  easily  be  sacrificed  to  our  new  requirements.  Lastly, 
there  should  be  more  knowledge  and  interest  in  our  scattered  wards 
among  our  higher  officials  at  home.  It  is  not  particularly  helpful  to  a 
naval  officer  suddenly  appointed  governor  of  such  a  place  as  Santo 
Domingo  to  have  the  secretary  who  should  outline  his  policy  turn  from 
the  map  on  which  he  has  just  looked  up  that  unknown  spot  and  make 
some  such  reply  as,  "  Orders  ?  Don't  bother  me  with  details.  I  have 
more  important  matters  requiring  my  attention.  Go  down  there  and 
sit  on  the  lid." 

As  an  example  of  the  improvements  already  accomplished  by  the 
occupation  there  is  the  matter  of  marriage.  Formerly  it  was  almost 
impossible  for  the  mass  of  the  people  to  form  legal  unions;  the  cost 
was  too  great  and  the  requirements  of  birth  certificates  and  other 
formalities  insurmountable.  As  a  result,  marriage  had  come  to  be 
looked  upon  as  a  superfluous  ceremony.  This  condition,  more  or  less 
universal  throughout  the  West  Indies,  is  a  deliberate  legacy  of  olden 
times.  The  exploiters  of  the  islands,  particularly  the  Spaniards, 
abetted  by  the  church,  whose  prosperity  depended  on  their  prosperity, 
purposely  made  marriage  difficult  among  the  laboring  classes.  A  mar- 
ried woman  and  her  children  could  demand  support  from  her  husband ; 
a  mere  consort  added  to  the  available  labor  supply,  because  she  was 
obliged  to  earn  her  livelihood  in  the  fields  and  to  send  her  children 
there  early  in  life.  Though  there  were  men  who  treated  their  irregular 
families  as  legal  dependents  before  the  Americans  came,  illegitimate 
children  were  frequently  abandoned,  mistreated,  or  exploited  to  a 
degree  that  drove  many  of  them  to  turn  bandit.  At  best  they  suffered 
for  want  of  a  firm  fatherly  hand  in  their  early  years.  The  occupation 
attacked  this  problem  by  forcing  men  to  pay  for  the  support  and  school- 
ing of  their  "  outside "  children.  As  little  stigma  attaches  to  this 
social  misbehavior  in  Santo  Domingo,  there  was  seldom  any  difficulty 
in  establishing  the  parentage.  It  was  usually  common  knowledge. 
Even  the  priests  have  families  in  the  majority  of  cases,  many  of  them 
frankly  acknowledging  their  sons  and  daughters.  There  are  men  in 
Santo  Domingo,  some  of  them  veritable  pillars  of  society,  who  suddenly 
saw  their  burdens  increased  from  two  or  three  children  to  twenty-five 


SANTO  DOMINGO  UNDER  AMERICAN  RULE       247 

under  the  new  law.  Marriages  are  now  free,  and  are  public  ceremonies. 
They  almost  always  take  place  at  night,  and  crowds  gather  outside  the 
wide-open,  lighted  house.  Members  of  the  family  come  out  and  talk 
with  friends  in  the  throng  now  and  then  but  do  not  invite  them  inside. 
About  the  parlor  table  sit  the  bride  and  groom,  the  notary  and  the  priest, 
surrounded  by  the  standing  relatives  and  intimate  amigos  and  com- 
padrcs.  There  is  much  signing  of  documents  and  ledgers,  each  fol- 
lowed by  a  sort  of  rapturous  sigh  from  the  curious  throng  in  the  street, 
which  under  no  circumstances  short  of  a  downpour  gives  any  signs  of 
breaking  up  until  the  new  couple  has  retired  from  the  scene.  Most 
dances,  fiestas,  and  family  celebrations  are  like  that  in  Santo  Domingo, 
where  the  principal  room  always  faces  the  street  and  the  heat  makes 
closed  doors  and  windows  worse  than  superfluous.  Sometimes  these 
open,  chair-forested  parlors  are  on  a  level  with  the  sidewalk,  some- 
times several  feet  below  it,  but  it  is  impossible  to  avoid  a  peep  inside, 
even  if  one  does  not  join  the  crowd.  Besides,  there  is  nothing  secretive 
about  such  Dominican  festivities ;  the  bride  who  did  not  see  a  throng 
gathered  before  her  door  on  her  wedding  night  would  probably  weep 
her  eyes  out  before  morning. 

When  the  Americans  arrived  there  were  only  18,000  pupils  nominally 
attending  the  schools  of  Santo  Domingo.  There  were  no  rural  schools 
whatever.  Many  "  teachers "  never  taught  at  all,  but  were  merely 
political  henchmen  who  drew  salaries,  some  of  them  wholly  illiterate. 
Some  of  them  farmed  their  "  pupils  "  out  or  worked  them  in  their 
own  fields.  Superintendents  and  inspectors  rarely  did  either,  and 
kept  no  records  whatever.  Listen  to  a  passage  from  a  novel  by  a 
sworn  enemy  of  the  occupation: 

The  average  Dominican  woman  frequented  —  the  word  is  well  chosen  —  a 
ichool  of  first  letters  sustained  and  directed  by  a  priest,  where  she  learned  to 
read  and  write  after  a  fashion,  the  barest  rudiments  of  arithmetic  and  geog- 
•aphy,  and  a  world  of  prayers  which  the  good  priest  made  special  effort  to  teach 
ler.  She  had  the  catechism  at  her  fingers'  ends,  but  except  for  the  forms  of 
levotion  she  was  a  complete  ignoramus  who  took  seriously  any  nonsense  told 
ler  by  those  who  happened,  falsely  or  otherwise,  to  have  her  confidence. 

There  was  not  even  a  basis  on  which  to  build  an  educational  system. 
Those  charged  with  the  task  had  to  begin  from  the  ground  up.  The 
peculiar  status  of  Santo  Domingo  gives  it  an  American  Minister  of 
Public  Instruction  and  a  native  superintendent,  the  reverse  of  the  case 
in  Haiti.  Both  are  earnest  men,  but  pedagogy  is  not  on  the  curriculum 
at  Annapolis.  No  attempt  has  been  made  to  Americanize  the  schools, 


248          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

as  in  Porto  Rico  and  the  Philippines,  which  is  proper  enough  politically 
but  questionable  educationally.  Every  man  has  been  made  personally 
responsible  for  the  men  under  him,  clear  down  through  the  system. 
The  occupation  now  has  100,000  pupils  in  the  schools,  with  as  many 
still  unprovided  for ;  but  many  of  the  former  attend  only  half  time  for 
lack  of  accommodations.  Dominican  illiteracy  still  exceeds  ninety  per 
cent.,  and  information  passes  chiefly  by  word  of  mouth,  with  consequent 
garbling.  An  attempt  is  being  made  to  have  the  university  in  the 
capital  teach  only  "  practical  "  subjects,  banishing  the  lofty  culture  with 
which  the  Latin-American  loves  to  flirt.  One  gets  the  impression, 
however,  that  there  is  more  attention  and  expense  bestowed  upon  the 
elaborate  educational  pamphlets  that  pour  in  a  constant  stream  from 
the  government  presses  than  on  the  adobe  school  houses  and  the  bare- 
foot urchins  who  attend  them. 

The  Dominican  of  the  masses  is  kindly,  hospitable,  long-suffering, 
and  hopeful ;  in  spite  of  having  been  exploited  and  mistreated  for 
centuries,  despite  his  tendency  to  settle  things  by  force  of  arms  and 
his  low  value  on  human  life,  he  is  still  simple  and  good-hearted  under- 
neath. Even  in  the  days  of  revolution  lone  Americans  went  in  safety 
where  a  company  of  marines  now  moves  with  caution.  The  mothers 
of  American  girls  married  to  officers  of  the  occupation  would  be  horri- 
fied to  know  that  their  daughters  use  murderers  from  the  Guardia 
prisons  as  cooks  and  servants,  yet  such  arrangements  scarcely  attract 
a  passing  comment  among  the  Americans  in  Santo  Domingo.  Like 
all  Latin-Americans,  the  dominicano  has  no  compassion,  either  for 
animals  or  his  fellow-men.  Brave  enough  in  physical  combat,  he  has 
little  moral  courage  —  I  have  already  mentioned  the  inability  of  native 
officials  to  discipline  their  own  people.  Worst  of  all,  he  has  no  idea 
how  to  curb  his  politicians.  The  best  families  emigrated  to  Cuba 
during  the  twenty-two  years  of  Haitian  rule,  and  the  latter  closed  the 
university  and  many  of  the  schools  as  superfluous  luxuries,  which  may 
be  among  the  reasons  why  the  "  higher  "  classes  do  not  measure  up  cor- 
respondingly in  character  with  the  masses.  A  rise  in  the  social  scale 
seems  frequently  to  bring  a  drop  in  moral  standards.  As  an  example : 
The  son  of  a  shoemaker  worked  his  way  through  school  with  truly 
American  spirit ;  he  studied  medicine  in  Paris,  learned  English  and 
French,  is  a  voracious  reader  of  all  the  literature  of  his  profession  in 
several  languages.  Yet  when  a  poor  countryman  with  a  broken  skull 
was  brought  in  to  him  by  a  Guardia  detachment,  he  declined  to  attend 


SANTO  DOMINGO  UNDER  AMERICAN  RULE       249 

him,  after  beginning  the  operation,  because  no  one  could  assure  him 
his  $500  fee. 

The  Dominicans  have  few  strictly  native  customs,  their  chief  charac- 
teristic being  their  fondness  for  revolutions.  They  are  gay,  vivacious, 
and  frivolous,  fond  of  music  and  dancing,  and  find  a  great  deal  of 
amusement  in  the  most  trivial  pastimes.  Bull-fights  have  long  since 
disappeared,  but  cock-fighting  is  the  universal  male  sport,  and  on  Sun- 
days and  feast  days  the  cockpit  is  the  center  of  attraction.  Not  a  city 
or  village  is  without  its  gallera;  in  the  country  districts  there  is  sure  to 
be  one  within  easy  distance  of  every  collection  of  thatched  huts.  On 
any  holiday  the  traveler  along  the  principal  roads  and  highways  is 
certain  to  meet  a  cavalcade  of  horsemen,  each  carefully  carrying  in  a 
sack  what  the  initiated  know  to  be  a  prize  rooster. 

The  chief  gallera  of  Santo  Domingo  City  was  just  back  of  our 
lodging.  On  Sunday  we  were  awakened  at  dawn  by  its  uproar,  which 
varied  in  volume  but  never  once  ceased  entirely  until  sunset.  In  the 
afternoon  I  wandered  into  the  enclosure;  paid  an  admission  fee  of 
twenty-five  cents,  and,  climbing  the  tank-like  outer  wall,  crowded  into 
a  place  up  near  the  round  sheet-iron  roof.  The  sport  is  legalized  and 
a  part  of  the  gate-money  goes  to  the  municipality,  netting  some  $1,500 
a  year.  This  is  a  mere  bagatelle,  however,  compared  to  the  sums  that 
change  hands  among  the  spectators  during  a  single  day's  sport.  Like 
most  Spanish  games,  betting  is  the  chief  raison  d'etre  of  the  cock-fight. 
The  constant,  deafening  hubbub  recalled  the  curb  market  of  New  York, 
as  well  as  the  ball  games  of  Havana.  Before  each  separate  contest 
there  were  long  waits  while  the  shrieking  spectators  placed  their  wagers 
on  the  two  haughty,  gorgeous  birds  tenderly  held  by  their  owners  or 
hired  seconds. 

It  came  as  a  surprise  to  find  what  class  of  men  attend  these  con- 
tests in  the  capital.  The  circle  of  faces  rising  eight  tiers  high  above 
the  earth-floored  pit  were  in  many  cases  wholly  free  from  negro  strain ; 
the  great  majority  of  the  audience  was  not  merely  well-dressed,  they 
showed  considerable  evidence  of  moderate  affluence.  Wealthy  mer- 
chants and  men  high  in  local  affairs,  two  or  three  ex-ministers,  were 
pointed  out  to  me  as  owners  of  one  or  several  contending  cocks. 
"  Chickens  "  would  be  a  more  exact  term,  for  the  fighters,  unlike  the 
spectators,  were  not  confined  to  one  sex.  The  toilettes  of  the  birds 
were  fantastic  in  the  extreme  —  each  had  been  clipped,  picked,  or  other- 


250          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

wise  denuded  of  its  feathers  on  various  parts  of  the  body,  particularly 
the  thighs  and  neck,  according  to  the  whim  or  expert  opinion  of  its 
trainer,  and  the  appearance  of  its  bare  skin  demonstrated  that  it  was 
indeed  in  the  "  pink  "  of  condition.  An  invariable  formality  preceded 
each  contest.  On  a  square  board  hanging  stiffly  on  poles  from  the 
roof  was  placed  a  pair  of  scales  in  which  the  two  opponents  were 
weighed  in  their  sacks,  custom  requiring  that  they  balance  one  another 
to  the  fraction  of  an  ounce.  Then,  when  a  lull  in  the  betting  showed 
that  the  spectators  had  decided  their  odds,  the  owner  or  his  agent 
filled  his  mouth  with  rum  and  water  and  spurted  it  in  a  fine  spray  over 
the  bird  from  haughty  head  to  bare  legs,  and  the  fight  was  on. 

The  first  battle  after  my  arrival  was  between  a  black  hen  and  a  red 
India  rooster.  From  the  moment  of  release  they  went  straight  at  it, 
like  professional  boxers.  Now  and  then  they  clinched,  but  as  there 
was  no  referee  to  separate  them  they  eventually  broke  away  them- 
selves. Then  the  rooster  took  to  running  round  and  round  the  ring, 
the  hen  after  him,  which  a  "  fan  "  beside  me  called  clever  strategy. 
During  the  early  part  of  the  fight  the  favorite  changed  with  every  peck, 
or  slash  of  the  spurs.  Shouts  loud  as  those  at  a  Thanksgiving  football 
game  seemed  to  set  the  tin  roof  above  us  to  vibrating.  The  shrieks  of 
the  bettors  were  emphasized  by  waving  hands,  by  jumping  up  and  down, 
by  shaking  money  in  one  another's  faces  and  placing  wagers  at  a  dis- 
tance by  lightning-quick,  cabalistic  gestures.  Those  who  hazarded  a 
mere  ten  dollars  a  "  throw  "  were  the  most  insignificant  of  "  pikers  " ; 
on  every  side  flashed  hundred-dollar  bills,  sometimes  two  or  three  of 
them  in  the  same  hand.  Screams  of  ecstasy  greeted  each  clever  spur- 
stroke,  awakening  a  loathsome  disgust  for  one's  fellow-men.  I  found 
myself  wondering  how  many  of  these  shrieking  fandticos  had  a  tenth 
as  much  nerve  as  their  gamey  chickens.  Certainly  none  of  them  would 
have  endured  so  much  punishment  without  crying  quits.  Gradually 
the  bets  dropped  from  even  to  ten  to  one.  The  rooster  was  getting  the 
worst  of  it.  He  had  gone  stone  blind,  his  head  was  a  mass  of  blood, 
he  was  so  groggy  on  his  feet  that  he  fell  dizzily  on  his  side  now  and 
then,  only  to  struggle  up  again  and  fight  on,  pecking  the  air  at  random 
while  his  opponent  continued  a  grueling  punishment.  The  owner  on 
the  side  lines  kept  shouting  frantic  advice  to  him,  —  "  Anda,  cobarde! 
Pica,  gallo!"  A  lucky  peck  or  spur-thrust  sometimes  suddenly  gives 
the  battle  even  to  a  blind  cock,  hence  there  was  still  hope.  Toward 
the  end  the  rooster  frequently  lay  down  from  sheer  fatigue,  his  oppo- 
nent respecting  his  fallen  condition  with  knightly  honor  and  never  once 


SANTO  DOMINGO  UNDER  AMERICAN  RULE       251 

touching  him  until  he  had  wabbled  to  his  feet  again.  The  exhibition 
became  monotonously  disgusting,  even  some  of  the  "  fans  "  began  to 
protest,  and  at  length  the  owner  stepped  into  the  pit  with  a  deprecating 
shrug  of  the  shoulders  and  snatched  up  the  rooster,  rudely,  in  one  hand, 
like  some  carrion  crow.  His  bleeding  head  hung  as  if  he  were  dead. 
Even  when  a  gamecock  wins,  it  cannot  fight  again  for  months;  if  it 
loses  it  means  the  garbage  heap  or  at  best  some  pauper's  pot.  A  man 
at  the  ringside  pulled  the  natural  spurs  off  the  defeated  bird  for  use 
on  some  other  less  well-armed  fowl,  losing  bettors  began  to  hunt  up 
the  winners  and  pay  their  debts,  and  another  throng  invaded  the  ring 
in  preparation  for  the  next  disgusting  contest. 

Santo  Domingo  City,  more  often  called  "  La  Capital "  within  the 
country,  is  a  prettier  town  than  Santiago,  and  somewhat  larger.  It 
is  less  compact,  has  more  trees  and  open  spaces,  and  many  curious  old 
ruins,  —  palaces,  gates,  fortresses,  and  churches  —  so  many  old 
churches,  in  fact,  that  some  of  them  are  now  used  as  theaters  and 
government  offices.  Of  the  several  ancient  stone  gateways  remaining 
from  its  former  city  wall  the  most  curious  is  the  "  Puerta  de  la  Inde- 
pendencia,"  opening  on  a  pretty  outer  plaza  —  curious  because  the 
Dominicans  pretend  it  is  the  gate  through  which  the  triumphant  army 
entered  after  driving  out  the  Haitians  in  1844,  though  any  street  urchin 
knows  the  entry  was  really  made  by  a  less  ornate  gate  nearer  the  sea. 
Then  there  is  the  aged  tree  down  in  the  custom  house  compound  on 
the  banks  of  the  Ozama  river  to  which  Columbus  is  said  to  have  tied 
one  of  his  ships.  The  cathedral  on  the  central  plaza  is  a  picturesque 
pile  of  old  stone,  without  tower  or  spire,  and  noteworthy  for  the 
elaborate  tomb  of  the  famous  Genoese  just  inside  its  main  portal. 
Without  going  into  tjie  vexed  question  of  whether  the  bones  it  contains 
are  really  those  of  the  great  discoverer,  except  to  say  that  Havana, 
Valladolid,  Seville,  and  Santo  Domingo  City  are  all  equally  certain 
that  they  have  the  genuine  remains,  one  can  at  least  say  that  the  tomb 
itself  is  worth  visiting.  Indeed,  though  a  trifle  ornate  for  American 
tastes,  it  is  astonishingly  artistic  to  the  traveler  long  familiar  with  the 
almost  universally  ludicrous  "  art  "  of  Latin-American  churches.  With 
its  splendid  bronze  reliefs,  its  excellent  small  figures  in  marble,  and  its 
inspiring  general  form,  it  might  almost  rank  as  the  gem  of  ecclesiastical 
architecture  south  of  the  Rio  Grande. 

Once  in  the  cathedral  there  are  several  other  things  worth  a  glance 
before  leaving,  though  its  tiny  windows  give  the  interior  an  eternal 


252          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

twilight.  Two  or  three  paintings  by  Velasquez  and  Murillo  have  a 
genuine  value;  a  picture  brought  over  by  Columbus  can  be  seen  only 
by  means  of  the  sexton's  key ;  a  cross  which  the  discoverer  of  America 
is  said  to  have  set  up  nearby  is  protected  by  glass  doors  let  into  the  wall 
because  the  faithful  and  the  curious  were  given  to  chipping  off  pieces 
as  sacred  relics  or  souvenirs.  The  mahogany  choir-stalls,  the  pulpits, 
and  the  altars  are  all  of  rich-red  old  woodwork.  There  is  an  excellent 
tomb  of  the  archbishop  who  was  once  president.  Indeed,  it  does  not 
seem  necessary  to  be  of  Columbian  stature  to  be  able  to  sleep  one's 
last  sleep  beside  the  doughty  old  navigator.  During  our  stay  in  the 
city  the  marble  floor  was  opened  a  few  feet  from  the  historic  tomb  to 
receive  the  remains  of  a  Syrian  merchant,  long  resident  in  "  La  Capital  " 
but  deceased  in  New  York,  whose  only  claim  to  glory  seemed  to  be  a 
fortune  easily  won  and  wisely  spent.  The  interior  of  the  cathedral  has 
been  generously  "  restored  "  by  daubing  the  walls  with  gleaming  white. 
It  was  planned  to  whitewash  the  aged  outer  walls  also,  but  the  Pope 
vetoed  the  suggestion,  for  which  the  Dominicans  seem  to  have  a  griev- 
ance against  him. 

The  government  palace,  occupied  now  by  Americans  in  navy  and 
marine  uniforms,  is  full  of  capacious  leather-upholstered  chairs,  in 
striking  contrast  to  the  average  uncomfortable  Dominican  seat.  No 
wonder  they  fought  one  another  to  become  president.  Ostentation  is 
more  important  than  real  use  among  the  two  score  or  more  automobiles 
with  wire  wheels  and  luxurious  tonneaux  that  hover  about  the  central 
plaza,  though  there  are  good  macadam  roads  for  16,  25,  and  30  kilo- 
meters respectively  in  as  many  directions.  The  theaters  are  seldom 
occupied  by  actors  in  the  flesh,  though  now  and  then  there  is  a  bit  of 
opera.  The  only  regular  attractions  are  the  movies,  which  begin  at 
nine  in  theory,  nearer  ten  in  practice,  and  feature  the  same  curly- 
haired  heroes  and  vapid- faced  heroines  that  nightly  decorate  the  screens 
in  the  United  States.  Like  all  Latin-Americans,  the  people  of  "  La 
Capital  "  are  great  lovers  of  noise.  Despite  American  rule  the  crack- 
voiced  church  bells  begin  their  constant  din  long  before  dawn.  During 
the  "  flu "  epidemic,  with  its  endless  succession  of  funerals,  they 
thumped  for  nine  mortal  days  without  a  pause,  until  the  marine  doctors 
protested  that  most  of  the  victims  were  dying  for  lack  of  sleep.  Auto- 
mobiles scorn  to  use  mufflers;  carriages  are  constantly  jangling  their 
bells.  Every  boy  in  town  is  an  expert  whistler,  and  every  passer-by 
will  find  some  way  of  making  a  noise  if  he  has  to  invent  it.  The 


SANTO  DOMINGO  UNDER  AMERICAN  RULE       253 

throngs  returning  from  the  cinemas  habitually  make  slumber  impos- 
sible until  after  midnight.  One  comes  to  wonder  if  it  is  not  this 
constant  lack  of  sleep  that  makes  the  Dominicans  so  nervous,  inatten- 
tive, and  racially  inefficient 

Small  as  it  looks  on  the  map  it  is  not  a  simple  matter  to  cover  all 
Santo  Domingo  in  a  few  weeks.  Among  the  parts  we  missed  were  the 
south-western  provinces,  including  the  town  of  Azua,  seventy  miles 
from  the  capital,  founded  in  1504  by  Don  Diego  Velazquez,  who  later 
conquered  and  settled  Cuba.  Thereabouts  once  dwelt  many  illustrious 
sons  of  old  Spain,  among  them  Cortes,  the  conqueror  of  Mexico, 
Pizarro,  who  subjugated  Peru,  and  Balboa,  the  discoverer  of  the  Pacific. 
A  much  shorter  route  from  Port  au  Prince  to  the  Dominican  capital 
is  that  through  this  region,  but  it  is  chiefly  by  water.  Lake  Azua, 
partly  in  Haiti,  is  fifty-six  feet  above  sea-level,  and  a  paradise  for  duck- 
hunters.  Lake  Enriquillo,  only  five  miles  east  of  the  other,  and  named 
for  the  last  Indian  chief  who  opposed  the  Spaniards,  is  a  hundred  feet 
below  the  sea  and  more  salty  than  the  ocean  itself.  Nor  should  the 
traveler  to  whom  time  is  unlimited  fail  to  visit  the  high  mountain 
ranges  in  the  center  of  the  country,  with  their  break-neck  trails  and 
luxuriant  vegetation. 

One  of  the  drawbacks  of  West  Indian  travel  is  the  lack  of  shipping 
between  the  islands,  particularly  the  larger  ones.  Only  in  the  ports 
themselves  can  one  get  the  slightest  data  on  sailings,  and  often  not  even 
there.  This  is  especially  true  of  Santo  Domingo,  one  of  whose  chief 
misfortunes  is  the  American  line  that  holds  a  virtual  monopoly  of  its 
sea-going  traffic.  Not  only  are  its  freight  and  passenger  rates  exorbi- 
tant, its  treatment  of  travelers  and  shippers  worse  than  autocratic, 
and  some  of  its  steamers  so  decrepit  that  they  take  twenty-six  days 
for  the  run  down  from  New  York,  halting  every  few  hours  to  pump 
out  the  vessel  or  patch  something  or  other  essential  to  her  safety, 
but  it  keeps  a  throttle  hold  on  poor  Santo  Domingo  by  more  or  less 
questionable  means.  Not  long  ago  another  line  proposed  to  establish 
traffic  between  the  island  and  New  Orleans.  One  of  its  steamers  put 
into  a  Dominican  port,  offering  to  take  cargo  at  reasonable  rates. 
Though  the  warehouses  along  the  wharves  were  piled  high  with  cacao, 
not  a  bag  was  turned  over  to  the  newcomer.  Her  captain  button-holed 
a  shipper  and  asked  for  an  explanation. 

"  It 's  like  this,"  whispered  the  latter,  "  we  should  like  to  give  you 


254  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

our  cargo,  but  if  we  do,  the  other  line  will  leave  our  in-coming  goods, 
on  which  we  are  absolutely  dependent,  lying  on  the  dock  in  New  York 
until  they  rot." 

The  captain  visited  several  other  ports  of  the  republic,  with  the  same 
result,  and  the  proposed  line  to  New  Orleans  died  for  lack  of  nourish- 
ment. Disgruntled  natives  assert  that  the  monopoly  keeps  its  hold 
because  it  has  a  large  fund  with  which  to  starve  out  competitors,  and 
because  its  president  is  a  member  of  our  Shipping  Board.  The  Domini- 
cans, however,  are  losing  patience,  and  there  are  signs  that  the  freight 
that  should  go  in  American  bottoms  will  gradually  go  to  British,  Dutch, 
and  later  to  German  steamers. 

We  were  spared  all  this  through  the  kindness  of  the  military  gover- 
nor, who  sent  us  to  La  Romana  on  a  submarine  chaser.  Lest  some 
reader  be  subject  to  seasickness  by  suggestion,  I  shall  not  say  a  word 
about  the  ability  of  these  otherwise  staunch  little  craft  to  cut  incredible 
acrobatic  capers  on  a  barely  rippling  sea.  The  fact  that  we  noted  the 
gaunt  old  American  battleship  Memphis  still  sitting  bolt  upright  on 
the  rocks  beside  the  seaside  promenade  of  the  capital  just  where  a  wave 
tossed  her  in  September,  1916,  the  dangerous  bottle  entrance  to  the 
harbor  of  San  Pedro  de  Macoris,  with  its  wrecked  schooner,  and  the 
water  that  spouted  a  hundred  feet  into  the  air  through  the  coral  holes 
along  the  low  rocky  coast  and  hung  like  mist  for  minutes  before  it  fell, 
must  be  accepted  as  proof  that  we  are  experienced  sailors.  At  length 
appeared  the  red  roofs  of  La  Romana,  with  its  narrow  river  harbor, 
similar  to  that  of  the  capital,  and  the  Santo  Domingo  we  knew  was  for- 
ever left  behind. 

Though  it  is  in  Dominican  territory,  La  Romana  is  virtually  Ameri- 
can, a  vast  estate  belonging  to  a  great  sugar  company  of  Porto  Rico. 
Thanks  largely  to  it,  sugar  is  the  chief  product  of  Santo  Domingo. 
Here  again  was  one  of  the  huge  centrals  with  which  we  had  grown 
so  familiar  in  Cuba,  with  its  big-business  atmosphere,  its  long  rows  of 
excellent  dwellings  built  of  light  coral  rock  along  the  edge  of  the  jagged 
coast,  its  own  stores,  clubs,  movies,  and  its  many  miles  of  standard- 
gauge  railroad.  We  rode  about  this  all  the  next  morning,  past  immense 
stretches  of  cane,  most  of  it  recently  cut,  through  bateys  of  white 
wooden  huts  raised  on  stilts,  sidetracked  now  and  again  by  long  trains 
of  cane,  hungry  bees  hovering  about  them,  and  finally  out  upon  great 
tracts  where  the  company  is  pushing  back  the  forests  and  the  bandits 
to  make  way  for  increased  sugar  production.  La  Romana  embraces 
a  quarter  million  acres,  of  which  only  16,000  are  under  cane,  immense 


SANTO  DOMINGO  UNDER  AMERICAN  RULE       255 

as  the  fields  already  look.  Three  fourths  of  the  estate  is  estimated 
good  cane  land,  and  the  foothills  make  excellent  pasture  as  fast  as  they 
are  cleared.  The  felling  of  these  great  forests,  with  what  would  seem 
to  the  uninformed  a  wanton  waste  of  lumber,  has  already  altered  the 
rainfall  of  the  region.  Formerly  the  rains  were  regular ;  this  year  not 
a  drop  fell  in  January,  yet  during  the  forty-eight  hours  of  our  visit  in 
early  February,  the  gauges  registered  more  than  five  inches.  The 
country  women  were  everywhere  paddling  about  under  strips  of  yagua 
in.  lieu  of  umbrellas. 

The  company  employs  from  7500  to  9000  men,  of  whom  a  bare  hun- 
dred are  Americans,  most  of  them  dwelling  in  the  great  central  batey. 
The  rest  are  chiefly  Haitians  and  Porto  Ricans,  with  a  large  sprinkling 
of  negroes  from  all  the  other  West  Indian  islands.  English,  Porto 
Rican,  and  Dominican  schools  are  maintained,  the  teachers  of  the  two 
former  being  paid  out  of  company  funds.  There  are  very  few  Domini- 
can employees,  the  natives,  though  good  ax-men,  being  usually  "  too 
Castilian  to  work  for  a  living."  Wages  range  from  an  average  of  $1.20 
a  day  for  cane-cutters  to  $4  for  mechanics,  with  twelve-hour  shifts 
and  a  twenty  per  cent,  bonus  for  all.  The  contrast  between  this  pro- 
ductive region  and  the  great  virgin  wilderness  of  most  of  Santo  Do- 
mingo gave  serious  meaning  to  the  parting  words  of  the  company 
punster,  "  What  the  Dominicans  need  most  is  to  stop  raising  Cain  and 
go  to  raising  cane." 

We  left  La  Romana  and  Santo  Domingo  on  one  of  the  two  cane 
boats  that  ply  nightly  between  this  dependency  and  the  mother  country. 
She  was  the  flat-bottomed  steamer  Glencadam  from  the  Great  Lakes, 
flying  the  British  flag  and  captained  by  a  quaint  old  Scotchman  whose 
cabin  far  forward  contained  almost  transatlantic  accommodations. 
Once  more  I  draw  the  curtain,  however,  on  the  merely  personal  matters 
of  pitch  and  roll,  greatly  abetted  in  this  case  by  the  recent  rains,  which 
had  made  it  impossible  to  gather  more  than  half  a  cargo.  The  very 
canes  themselves  were  showing  a  tendency  to  waltz  before  we  had 
passed  the  mouth  of  the  river  and  turned  our  nose  toward  Porto  Rico, 
already  lying  cloud-like  and  phantasmal  on  the  eastern  horizon. 


CHAPTER  XI 

OUR   PORTO   RICO 

"IT  'IT  THEN  the  queen  asked  for  a  description  of  the  island,"  says 
%/%/     an  old  chronicle,  "  Columbus  crumpled  up  a  sheet  of  paper 
T    T       and,  tossing  it  upon  the  table,  cried,  4  It  looks  just  like  that, 
your  Majesty ! ' ' 

If  we  are  to  believe  more  modern  documents,  the  intrepid  Genoese 
made  that  his  stock  illustration  for  most  of  the  islands  he  discovered. 
Even  the  firm  head  of  Isabela  must  have  wobbled  under  its  crown 
as  one  after  another  of  the  misnamed  "  West  Indies  "  were  pictured 
to  her  in  the  same  concise  fashion,  and  brushed  off  into  the  regal  waste- 
basket.  Fortunately,  paper  was  cheaper  in  those  days.  Or  was  it? 
Perhaps  it  was  the  wrath  born  of  seeing  her  last  precious  sheet  turned 
into  an  island  that  soured  the  queen's  gratitude,  and  brought  the  doughty 
discoverer  to  dungeons  and  disgrace. 

Questions  of  wanton  waste  aside,  there  could  be  no  more  exact 
description  of  Porto  Rico.  The  ancient  jest  about  quadrupling  the 
area  of  a  land  by  flattening  it  out  all  but  loses  its  facetiousness  when 
applied  to  our  main  West  Indian  colony.  Barely  a  hundred  miles 
long  and  forty  wide,  a  celestial  rolling-pin  would  give  old  Borinquen 
almost  the  vast  extent  of  Santo  Domingo.  Its  unbrokenly  mountain- 
ous character  makes  any  detailed  description  of  its  scenic  beauties  a 
waste  of  effort ;  it  could  be  little  more  than  a  constant  series  of  exclama- 
tions of  delight. 

For  all  its  ruggedness,  it  is  as  easy  to  get  about  the  island  as  it  is 
difficult  to  cover  the  larger  one  to  the  westward.  There  is  not  a  spot 
that  cannot  be  reached  from  any  other  point  between  sunrise  and  sun- 
set. A  railroad  encircles  the  western  two  thirds  of  the  island,  with 
trains  by  night  as  well  as  by  day.  When  the  Americans  came,  they 
found  a  splendidly  engineered  military  road  from  coast  to  coast,  with 
branches  in  several  directions.  If  this  sounds  strange  of  a  Spanish 
country,  it  must  be  accounted  for  not  by  civic  pride  or  necessity,  but  in 
the  vain  hope  of  defending  the  island  from  armed  invasion.  To-day 
there  are  hundreds  of  miles  of  excellent  highway  covering  Porto  Rico 

256 


OUR  PORTO  RICO  257 

with  a  network  of  quick  transit  that  reaches  all  but  the  highest  peaks  of 
its  central  range.  It  is  doubtful  whether  any  state  of  our  union  can 
rival  this  detached  bit  of  American  territory  in  excellence  and  extent 
of  roads,  certainly  not  in  the  scenic  splendor  that  so  generally  flanks 
them. 

Automobiles  flash  constantly  along  these  labyrinthian  carreteras, 
many  of  them  bearing  the  licenses  of  "  the  Mainland."  If  the  visitor 
has  neglected  to  include  his  own  car  among  his  baggage  and  trembles 
at  the  thought  of  the  truly  American  bill  that  awaits  the  end  of  a  private 
journey,  there  are  always  the  guaguas,  pronounced  "  wawas  "  by  all 
but  those  who  take  Spanish  letters  at  full  English  value.  Scarcely  a 
road  of  Borinquen  lacks  one  or  two  of  the  public  auto-buses  each  day 
in  either  direction,  carrying  the  mails  and  such  travelers  as  deign  to 
mix  with  the  rank  and  file  of  their  fellow-citizens  of  Spanish  ancestry. 
My  tastes  no  doubt  are  plebeian,  but  I  for  one  gladly  pass  up  the 
haughty  private  conveyance  for  these  rumbling  plow-horses  of  the 
gasolene  world.  They  have  all  the  charm  of  the  old  stage-coaches  that 
prance  through  the  pages  of  Dickens,  except  for  the  change  of  horses. 
In  them  one  may  strike  up  conversation  with  any  of  the  varied  types 
of  rural  Porto  Rico,  and  the  halt  at  each  post-office  brings  little  episodes 
that  the  scurrying  private  tourist  never  glimpses.  < 

"  We  divide  the  people  of  Porto  Rico  into  four  categories  for  pur- 
poses of  identification/'  said  the  American  chief  of  the  Insular  Police, 
"  according  to  the  shape  of  their  feet.  The  minority,  mostly  town- 
dwellers,  wear  shoes.  Of  the  great  mass  of  countrymen,  those  with 
broad,  flat  feet,  live  in  the  cane-lands  around  the  coast.  The  coffee 
men  have  over-developed  big  toes,  because  they  use  them  in  climbing 
the  steep  hillsides  from  bush  to  bush.  In  the  tobacco  districts,  where 
the  planting  is  done  with  the  feet,  they  are  short  and  stubby.  It  beats 
the  Bertillon  system  all  hollow." 

The  man  bent  on  seeing  the  varying  phases  of  Porto  Rican  life 
could  not  do  better  than  adopt  the  chief's  broad  divisions  of  the  popu- 
lation ;  for  our  over-crowded  little  Caribbean  isle  is  a  complex  com- 
munity, as  complex  in  its  way  as  its  great  stepmother-land,  and  one 
that  defies  the  pick-things-up-as-you-go  method.  Small  as  it  is,  it  con- 
tains a  diversity  of  types  that  emphasizes  the  influence  of  occupation, 
immediate  environment,  even  scenery,  on  the  human  family. 

San  Juan,  the  capital  —  to  give  the  shod  minority  the  precedence  — 
is  compacted  together  on  a  small  island  of  the  north  coast,  attached  to 
the  rest  of  the  country  only  by  a  broad  macadam  highway  along  which 


258          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

stream  countless  automobiles,  and  strictly  modern  street-cars  and  their 
rival  auto-buses  in  constant  five-cent  procession.  It  was  a  century  old 
when  the  Dutch  colonized  New  Amsterdam.  Small  wonder  that  it 
looks  upon  its  scurrying  fellow-citizens  from  "  los  Estados  "  as  par- 
venus. Palaces  and  fortifications  that  antedate  the  building  of  the 
Mayflower  still  tower  above  the  compact,  cream-colored  mass,  most  of 
them  now  housing  high  officials  from  the  North.  Casa  Blanca,  built 
for  Ponce  de  Leon  —  the  younger,  it  is  true  —  now  resounds  to  the 
footsteps  of  the  American  colonel  commanding  the  Porto  Rican  regi- 
ment of  our  regular  army.  The  governor's  palace,  almost  as  aged, 
has  an  underground  passage  that  carried  many  a  mysterious  personage 
to  and  from  the  outer  sea-wall  in  the  old  Spanish  days,  and  through 
which  more  than  one  American  governor  is  said  to  have  regained  his 
quarters  at  hours  and  under  conditions  which  caused  him  to  mumble 
blessings  on  Castilian  foresight,  though  it  is  hard  to  give  credence  to 
this  latter  tradition,  for  how  could  he  escape  the  all-seeing  American 
chief  of  police  who  occupies  the  lower  story?  The  Stars  and  Stripes 
still  seem  a  bit  incongruous  above  the  inevitable  Morro  Castle,  while 
the  tennis-court  in  its  moat  and  the  golf-links  across  its  grassy  parade- 
ground  have  almost  a  suggestion  of  the  sacrilegious.  Of  the  cathedral 
with  its  green  plaster  covering  there  is  little  to  be  said,  except  that  the 
solemn  Spanish  dedication  over  th£  bones  of  Ponce  de  Leon  loses  some- 
thing of  its  solemnity  in  being  signed  by  Archbishop  Monsenor  Bill 
Jones.  The  mighty  sea-wall  that  holds  the  sometimes  raging  Atlantic 
at  bay,  and  massive  San  Cristobal  fortress  at  the  neck  of  the  town  are 
worth  coming  far  to  see,  but  they  have  that  in  common  with  many  a 
Spanish-American  monument. 

For  after  all,  San  Juan  is  still  a  son  of  Spain,  despite  the  patently 
American  federal  building  that  contains  its  post-office  and  custom- 
house. Its  architecture  is  of  the  bare,  street-toeing  facade,  interior- 
patio  variety,  its  sidewalks  all  but  imaginary,  its  noise  unceasing. 
Beautiful  as  it  looks  from  across  the  bay,  heaped  up  on  its  nose  of  land, 
it  has  little  of  the  pleasant  spaciousness  of  younger  cities,  and  withal 
no  great  amount  of  the  Latin  charm  with  which  one  imbues  it  from 
afar.  Its  Americanization  consists  chiefly  of  frequent  "  fuentes  de 
soda  "  in  place  of  its  bygone  cafes,  and  a  certain  reflection  of  New 
York  ways  in  its  larger  stores,  whose  almost  invariably  male  clerks 
sometimes  know  enough  English  to  nod  comprehendingly  and  bring  an 
armful  of  shirts  when  one  asks  for  trousers.  Something  more  than 


OUR  PORTO  RICO  259 

that,  of  course;  its  dressier  men  have  discarded  their  mustaches  as  a 
sign  of  their  new  citizenship,  and  many  a  passer-by  who  knows  not  a 
word  of  English  has  all  the  outward  appearance  of  a  continental 
American.  Base-ball,  too,  has  come  to  stay,  though  the  counter  influ- 
ence may  be  detected  in  the  custom  of  American  schoolmarms  of  attend- 
ing the  bet-curdling  horse  races  in  the  outskirts  of  the  capital  on  Sunday 
afternoons. 

The  central  plaza  on  a  Sunday  evening  has  a  few  notes  of  unique- 
ness to  the  sated  Latin-American  traveler.  It  is  unusually  small,  a 
long,  narrow  rectangle  with  few  trees  or  benches,  cement  paved  from 
edge  to  edge,  and  burdened  with  the  name  of  "  Plaza  Baldorioty."  The 
Porto  Rican  seems  to  like  free  play  in  his  central  squares;  more  than 
a  few  of  them  have  been  denuded  of  the  royal  palms  of  olden  times, 
and  are  reduced  to  the  bare  hard  level  of  a  tennis-court.  A  few  years 
ago  a  venturesome  American  Jew  conceived  the  plan  of  providing 
concert-going  San  Juan  with  rocking-chairs  in  place  of  the  uncomfort- 
able iron  sillas  that  decorate  every  other  Sunday-evening  plaza  south 
of  the  Rio  Grande.  Strangely  enough,  the  innovation  took.  Now 
one  must  be  an  early  arrival  at  the  weekly  retreta  if  he  would  exchange 
his  dime  for  even  the  last  of  the  rockers  that  flank  the  Plaza  Baldorioty 
four  rows  deep  on  each  side.  While  the  municipal  band  renders  its 
classical  program  with  a  moderate  degree  of  skill,  all  San  Juan  rocks 
in  unison  with  the  leader's  baton.  All  San  Juan  with  the  color-line 
drawn,  that  is;  for  whether  it  is  true  that  the  well-groomed  insular 
police  have  secret  orders  to  ask  them  to  move  on,  or  it  is  merely  a  time- 
honored  custom,  black  citizens  shun  the  central  square  on  Sunday 
evenings,  or  at  most  hang  about  the  outskirts.  There  is  no  division  of 
sexes,  however,  another  evidence  perhaps  of  American  influence. 
Senoritas  sometimes,  good  to  look  at  in  spite  of  their  heavy  coating  of 
rice  powder  trip  back  and  forth  beside  their  visibly  enamored  swains 
as  freely  as  if  the  Moorish  customs  of  their  neighboring  cousins  had 
long  since  been  forgotten.  For  the  time-honored  promenade  has  not 
succumbed  to  the  rocking-chair.  One  has  only  to  turn  his  rented  seat 
face  down  upon  the  pavement,  like  an  excited  crap-player,  to  assure 
his  possession  of  it  upon  his  return  from  the  parading  throng,  whose 
shuffling  feet  and  animated  chatter  drown  out  the  music  a  few  yards 
away,  and  no  great  harm  done.  In  that  slow-moving  procession  one 
may  see  the  mayor  and  all  the  "  quality  "  of  San  Juan,  a  generous  sprink- 
ling of  Yankees,  and  scores  of  American  soldiers  who  know  barely  a 


260          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

word  of  English,  yet  who  have  a  racial  politeness  and  a  complete  lack 
of  rowdyism  that  is  seldom  attained  by  other  wearers  of  our  military 
uniform.  Then  suddenly  one  is  aware  of  a  tingling  of  the  blood  as  the 
retreta  ends  with  a  number  that,  far  from  the  indifference  or  scorn  it 
evokes  in  the  rest  of  Latin  America,  brings  all  San  Juan  quickly  to  its 
feet,  males  uncovered  or  standing  stiffly  at  salute  —  the  Star- Spangled 
Banner. 

From  the  sea-wall  one  may  gaze  westward  to  Cabras  Island,  with 
its  leper  prisoners,  and  beyond  to  Punta  Salinas,  "  poking  its  rocky  nose 
into  the  boiling  surf."  Ferries  ply  frequently  across  the  bay  to  pretty 
Catano,  but  it  is  far  more  picturesque  at  a  distance.  From  San 
Juan,  too,  the  tumbled  deep-green  hills  behind  the  little  town  have  a 
Japanese-etching  effect  in  the  mists  of  the  rainy  season  that  is  grad- 
ually lost  as  one  approaches  them,  as  surely  as  when  the  sun  burns 
it  away. 

But  there  is  more  to  modern  San  Juan  than  this  old  Spanish  city 
huddled  together  on  its  nose  of  rock.  It  has  grown  in  American 
fashion  not  only  by  spreading  far  beyond  its  original  area,  but  by 
boldly  embracing  far-flung  suburbs  within  the  "  city  limits."  Puerta 
de  Tierra,  once  nothing  more  than  the  "  land  gate  "  its  name  implies, 
is  almost  a  city  of  itself,  a  pathetic  town  of  countless  shacks  built  of 
tin  and  dry-goods  boxes,  spreading  down  across  the  railroad  to  the 
swampy  edge  of  the  bay,  where  anemic  babies  roll  squalling  and  naked 
in  the  dirt,  and  long  lines  of  hollow-eyed  women  file  by  an  uninviting 
milk-shop,  each  holding  forth  a  pitifully  small  tin  can.  It  is  far  out 
across  San  Antonio  Bridge,  however,  that  the  capital  has  seen  most  of 
its  growth  under  American  rule.  More  than  half  of  its  seventy  thou- 
sand, which  have  raised  it,  perhaps,  to  second  place  among  West  Indian 
cities,  dwell  in  capacious,  well-shaded  Miramar  and  Santurce.  Time 
was  when  its  people  were  content  to  make  the  upper  story  of  the 
old  town  its  "  residential  section,"  but  it  is  natural  that  the  desire  for 
open  yards  and  back  gardens  should  have  come  with  American  citizen- 
ship. 

Ponce,  on  the  south  coast,  gives  the  false  impression  of  being  a  larger 
city  than  the  capital,  loosely  strewn  as  it  is  over  a  dusty  flat  plain  and 
overflowing  in  hovels  of  decreasing  size  into  the  low  foot-hills  behind. 
It  is  the  most  extensive  town  in  Porto  Rico,  and,  like  many  of  those 
around  the  coast,  lies  a  few  miles  back  from  the  sea,  for  fear  of  pirates 


OUR  PORTO  RICO  261 

in  the  olden  days,  with  a  street-car  service  to  its  shipping  suburb  of 
Ponce-Playa.  Air-plants  festoon  its  telephone  wires,  and  its  mosquitos 
are  so  aggressive  that  to  dine  in  its  principal  hotel  is  to  wage  a  constant 
battle,  while  to  disrobe  and  enter  a  bathroom  is  a  perilous  undertaking. 
It  was  carnival  time  when  we  visited  Ponce.  By  day  there  was  lit- 
tle evidence  of  it,  except  for  the  urchins  in  colored  rags  who  paraded 
the  streets  and  the  unusual  throngs  of  gaily  garbed  citizens  who 
crowded  the  plaza  on  Sunday  afternoon.  At  night  bedlam  broke  loose, 
though,  to  tell  the  truth,  the  uproar  was  chiefly  caused  by  automobile- 
horns.  The  medieval  gaieties  of  this  season  have  sadly  deteriorated 
under  the  staid  American  influence.  What  there  is  left  of  them  takes 
place  chiefly  within  the  native  clubs,  each  of  which  has  its  turn  in 
gathering  together  the  elite  of  the  city  and  such  strangers  as  can  estab- 
lish their  ability  to  conduct  themselves  with  Latin  courtesy.  We  suc- 
ceeded in  imposing  ourselves  upon  the  Centre  Espafiol.  But  there 
were  more  spectators  than  spectacle  in  its  flag  and  flower-festooned 
interior.  Toward  ten  the  throng  had  thickened  to  what  seemed  full 
capacity,  but  it  was  made  up  chiefly  of  staid  dowagers  and  solemn 
caballeros  whose  formal  manners  would  have  been  equally  in  place  at 
a  funeral.  Only  a  score  of  girls  wore  masks,  and  these  confined  their 
festive  antics  to  pushing  their  way  up  and  down  the  hall,  squeaking 
in  a  silly  falsetto  at  the  more  youthful  oglers.  Even  confetti  was 
strewn  sparingly,  evidently  for  lack  of  spirit  of  the  occasion,  for  the 
mere  fact  that  a  small  bag  of  it  cost  $1.50  seemed  no  drawback  to 
those  who  would  be  revelers.  At  the  unseemly  hour  of  eleven  the 
queen  at  length  made  her  appearance,  escorted  to  her  throne  by  pages, 
knights  and  ladies-in-waiting,  while  courtiers  flocked  about  her  with 
insistent  manners  that  could  be  called  courteous  only  in  Latin-Ameri- 
can society.  But  her  beauty  was  tempered  by  an  expression  that  sug- 
gested bored  annoyance,  whether  for  the  tightness  of  her  stays  or  the 
necessity  of  avoiding  life-long  disgrace  by  choosing  one  of  these  press- 
ing suitors  before  a  year  had  passed  there  was  no  polite  means  of  learn- 
ing. The  most  aggressive  swain  led  her  forth  and  the  dancing  began. 
It  differed  but  slightly  from  a"  dance  of  "  high  society  "  in  any  other 
part  of  the  world.  I  wandered  into  the  "  bar."  But  alas !  I  had 
forgotten  again  that  I  was  in  my  native  land.  There  was  something 
pathetically  ludicrous  in  the  sight  of  the  score  of  thirsty  Latin-Ameri- 
cans who  gazed  pensively  at  the  candy,  chewinggum,  and  "  soft  drinks  " 
that  decorated  what  had  once  been  so  enticing  a  sideboard,  for  after 


262          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

all  they  were  not  of  a  race  that  had  abused  the  bottled  good  cheer 
that  has  vanished. 

Mayaguez  was  more  like  the  ghost  of  a  city  than  a  living  town.  Its 
ugly  plaza  was  a  glaring  expanse  of  cracked  and  wrinkled  cement 
across  which  wandered  from  time  to  time  a  ragged,  hungry-looking 
bootblack  or  a  disheveled  old  woman,  dragging  her  faded  calico  train, 
and  slapping  the  pavement  in  languid  regularity  with  her  loose  slippers. 
On  his  cracked  globe  pedestal  in  the  center  of  the  square  the  statue  of 
Columbus  stood  with  raised  hand  and  upturned  gaze  as  if  he  were 
thanking  heaven  that  he  had  not  been  injured  in  the  catastrophe.  Of 
the  dozen  sculptured  women  perched  on  the  balustrade  around  the 
place  several  had  lost  their  lamps  entirely;  the  rest  held  them  at  tipsy 
angles.  The  massive  concrete  and  mother-of-pearl  benches  were 
mostly  broken  in  two  or  fallen  from  their  supports.  Workmen  were 
demolishing  the  ruined  cathedral  at  the  end  of  the  square,  bringing 
down  clouds  of  plaster  and  broken  stone  with  every  blow  of  their 
picks,  and  now  and  then  a  massive  beam  or  heavy,  iron-studded  door 
that  suggested  the  wisdom  of  seeing  the  sights  elsewhere.  House  after 
house  lay  in  tumbled  heaps  of  debris  as  we  strolled  through  the  broad, 
right-angled  streets,  along  which  we  met  not  hundreds,  but  a  scattered 
half-dozen  passers-by  to  the  block.  The  majority  of  these  were 
negroes.  The  wealthier  whites  largely  abandoned  the  town  after  the 
disaster.  Spaniards  gathered  together  the  remnants  of  their  fortunes 
and  returned  to  more  solid- footed  Spain;  Porto  Ricans  began  anew 
in  other  parts  of  the  island.  The  sisters  of  St.  Vincent  de  Paul  have 
a  bare  two  hundred  pupils  now  where  once  they  had  two  thousand. 
It  was  hard  to  believe  that  this  was  a  city  of  teeming,  over-crowded 
Porto  Rico. 

Eighty  years  ago  earthquakes  were  so  continuous  in  this  western 
end  of  the  island  that  for  one  notable  six  months  the  population  ate 
its  food  raw ;  pots  would  not  sit  upon  the  stoves.  But  the  new  genera- 
tion had  all  but  forgotten  that.  Guide-books  of  recent  date  assert  in 
all  sincerity  that  "  Porto  Rico  is  as  free  from  earthquakes  as  from 
venomous  snakes."  Then  suddenly  on  the  morning  of  October  n, 
1918,  a  mighty  shake  came  without  an  instant's  warning.  Within 
twenty  seconds  most  of  Mayaguez  fell  down.  The  sea  receded  for 
several  miles,  and  swept  back  almost  to  the  heart  of  the  town,  tossing 
before  it  cement  walls,  automobiles,  huge  iron  blocks,  debris,  and 


OUR  PORTO  RICO  263 

mutilated  bodies.  Miraculous  escapes  are  still  local  topics  of  conver- 
sation. A  merchant  was  thrown  a  hundred  yards  —  into  a  boat  that 
set  him  down  at  length  on  his  own  door-step.  A  great  tiled  roof  fell 
upon  a  gathering  of  nuns,  and  left  one  of  them  standing  unscratched 
in  what  had  been  an  opening  for  a  water-pipe.  Scientists,  corrobor- 
ated by  a  cable  repair-ship,  explain  that  the  sea-floor  broke  in  two  some 
forty  miles  westward  and  dropped  several  hundred  fathoms  deeper. 
Lighter  quakes  have  been  frequent  ever  since;  half  a  dozen  of  them 
were  felt  all  over  Porto  Rico  during  our  stay  there.  The  inhabitants 
of  all  the  western  end  are  still  nervous.  More  than  one  American 
teacher  in  that  region  has  suddenly  looked  up  to  find  herself  in  a  de- 
serted school-room,  the  pupils  having  jumped  out  the  windows  at  the 
first  suggestion  of  a  tremor. 

Mayaguez  is  slowly  rebuilding;  of  reinforced  concrete  now,  or  at 
least  of  wood.  Little  damage  was  done  on  that  October  morning  to 
wooden  structures,  which  is  one  of  the  reasons  that  the  crowded  hovels 
along  the  sea  front  have  none  of  the  deserted  air  of  the  city  proper.  A 
still  more  potent  reason  is  that  this  class  of  inhabitants  had  nowhere  else 
to  go.  By  Porto  Rican  law  the  entire  beach  of  the  island  is  government 
property,  for  sixty  feet  back  of  the  water's  edge.  As  a  consequence, 
what  would  in  our  own  land  be  the  choicest  residential  section  is  every- 
where covered  with  squatters,  who  pay  no  rent,  and  patch  their  miser- 
able little  shelters  together  out  of  tin  cans,  old  boxes,  bits  of  driftwood, 
and  yagua  or  palm-leaves,  the  interior  walls  covered,  if  at  all,  with 
picked-up  labels  and  illustrated  newspapers. 

One  can  climb  quickly  into  the  hills  from  Mayaguez,  with  a  wonder- 
ful view  of  the  bay,  the  half-ruined  city,  with  its  old  gray-red  tile  roofs, 
rare  now  in  Porto  Rico,  and  seas  of  cane  stretching  from  the  coast  to 
the  foot-hills,  which  spring  abruptly  into  mountains,  little  huts  strewn 
everywhere  over  their  crinkled  and  warty  surface  as  far  as  the  eye 
can  see. 

Its  three  principal  cities  by  no  means  exhaust  the  list  of  impor- 
tant towns  in  Porto  Rico.  Indeed  the  number  and  the  surprising  size 
of  them  cannot  but  strike  the  traveler,  the  extent  even  of  those  in  the 
interior  astounding  the  recent  visitor  to  Cuba.  There  is  Arecibo,  for 
instance,  a  baking-hot,  dusty  place  on  a  knoll  at  the  edge  of  the  sea, 
with  no  real  harbor,  but  a  splendid  beach  —  given  over  to  naked  urchins 
and  foraging  pigs  —  and  a  railroad  station  that  avoids  the  town  by  a 


264          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

mile  or  more,  as  if  it  were  suffering  from  the  plague.  San  German, 
founded  by  Diego  Columbus  in  1512,  destroyed  times  without  number 
by  pirates,  Indians,  all  the  European  rivals  of  Spain,  and  even  by 
mosquitos,  which  forced  its  founders  to  rebuild  in  a  new  spot,  has 
moved  hither  and  yon  about  the  southwestern  corner  of  the  island 
until  it  is  a  wonder  its  own  inhabitants  can  find  it  by  night.  Or  there 
is  Cabo  Rojo,  where  hats  of  more  open  weave  than  the  Panama  are 
made  of  the  cogolla  palm-leaf  of  the  palmetto  family. 

Yauco,  a  bit  farther  east,  is  striking  chiefly  for  the  variegated  hay- 
stack of  poor  man's  hovels  resembling  beehives,  that  are  heaped  up  the 
steep  hillside  in  its  outskirt  and  seen  from  afar  off  in  either  direction. 
Guayama  is  proud,  and  justly  so,  of  its  bulking  new  church,  which  is 
so  up-to-date  that  it  is  fitted  with  Pullman-car  soap-spouts  for  the  sav- 
ing of  holy  water.  Maunabo,  among  its  cane-fields,  lies  out  of  reach 
of  buccaneer  cannon,  hurricanes,  and  tidal  waves,  like  so  many  of  the 
"  coast "  towns  of  old  Borinquen,  and  does  its  seaside  business  through 
a  "  Playa  "  of  the  same  name.  It  still  holds  green  the  memory  of  the 
stern  but  playful  young  American  school-master  who  first  taught  its 
present  generation  to  salute  the  Stars  and  Stripes,  but  though  it  boasts 
a  faultless  cement  building  now  in  place  of  the  hovel  that  posed  as 
escuela  publica  in  those  pioneer  days,  it  seems  not  to  have  learned  the 
American  doctrine  of  quick  expansion  as  well  as  some  of  its  fellows. 

Beyond  Maunabo  the  highway  climbs  through  huts  and  rocks  that 
look  strangely  alike  as  they  lie  tossed  far  up  the  spur  of  the  central 
range,  then  past  enormous  granite  boulders  that  suggest  reclining  ele- 
phants, and  out  upon  an  incredible  expanse  of  cane,  with  pretty  Ya- 
bucoa  planted  in  its  center  and  Porto  Rico's  dependent  islands  of  Vie- 
ques and  Culebra  breaking  the  endless  vista  of  sea  to  the  southward. 
Humacao  and  Naguabo  have  several  corners  worthy  a  painter's  sketch- 
book, and  soon  the  coast-line  swings  us  northward  again  to  sugar- 
choked  Fajardo,  with  its  four  belching  smokestacks,  and  leaves  us 
no  choice  but  to  cease  our  journey  ings  by  land  or  return  to  San  Juan. 
There  we  may  dash  across  or  around  the  bay  to  Bayamon,  a  "  whale 
of  a  town  and  a  bad  one,"  in  the  words  of  the  police  chief,  but  also 
the  site  of  the  "  City  of  Puerto  Rico  "  that  afterward  changed  its  name 
and  location  and  became  the  present  capital.  Of  the  towns  that  dot 
the  mountainous  interior  the  traveler  should  not  miss  Caguas  and 
Cayey,  Coamo  and  Comerio,  Barranquitas  and  Juana  Diaz,  Lares  and 
Utuado,  and  a  half-dozen  others  that  are  no  mere  villages,  including 
Aibonito  (Ai!  Bonito!  —  Ah!  Pretty!)  set  more  than  two  thousand 


OUR  PORTO  RICO  265 

feet  aloft,  and  famed  for  its  fresas,  which  in  Porto  Rico  means  a  fruit 
that  grows  on  a  thorny  bush  beside  the  little  streams  of  high  altitudes, 
that  looks  like  a  cross  between  a  luscious  strawberry  and  a  mammoth 
raspberry  and  tastes  like  neither. 

But  it  is  high  time  now  to  descend  to  Coamo  Springs  for  the  one  un- 
failingly hot  bath  in  the  West  Indies  —  when  one  can  induce  the  serv- 
ants to  produce  the  key  to  it. 

Some  eighty  years  ago  a  man  was  riding  over  the  breakneck  trail 
from  Coamo  to  Ponce  to  pay  a  bill  —  there  is  a  fishy  smell  to  that 
last  detail,  but  let  it  pass  —  when  he  lost  his  way  and  stumbled  by 
accident  upon  a  hot  spring.  Making  inquiries,  he  found  that  the 
region  belonged  to  a  druggist  in  the  southern  metropolis  and  that  his 
own  broad  acres  bounded  the  property  on  the  left.  He  called  on  the 
druggist  and  after  the  lengthy  preliminaries  incident  to  any  Spanish- 
American  deal,  offered  to  sell  his  own  land  to  the  apothecary. 

"  It 's  of  no  use  to  me,"  he  explained,  "  and  as  you  have  the  adjoining 
land  —  and  —  and  " 

"  Why,"  cried  the  druggist,  "  my  own  finca  is  not  worth  a  peseta  to 
me!  Why  on  earth  should  I  be  buying  yours  also?" 

"  Well,  then,  I  '11  buy  yours  of  you,"  suggested  the  horseman ; 
"  there  is  no  sense  in  having  two  owners  to  a  tract  that  really  belongs 
together.  Let 's  settle  the  matter  and  be  done  with  it.  I  happen  to 
have  two  thousand  dollars  with  me.  I  was  going  to  pay  a  debt  with 
it" — the  fishy  smell  was  no  olfactory  illusion,  you  see — "but — " 

The  druggist  jumped  at  the  chance,  the  titles  were  transferred,  and 
the  horseman  rode  homeward  —  no  doubt  giving  his  creditor  a  wide 
berth.  He  built  a  shack  beside  the  hot  spring,  carved  out  a  bath  in  the 
rock,  invited  his  friends,  who  also  found  the  strange  custom  pleasant, 
and  gradually  there  grew  up  around  the  place  a  hotel  famous  for  its  — 
gambling.  Clients  willingly  slept  in  chairs  by  day,  when  rooms  were 
full,  if  only  they  could  lose  their  money  by  night.  By  the  time  the 
Americans  came  Coamo  Springs  was  synonymous  with  the  quick  ex- 
change of  fortunes.  A  more  modern  hotel  had  been  built,  with  a 
broad  roofed  stairway  leading  down-  to  the  baths,  and  rooms  enough 
to  ensure  every  gambler  a  morning  siesta.  Then  one  day  —  so  the 
story  goes,  though  I  refuse  to  be  haled  into  court  to  vouch  for  it  —  an 
American  governor  who  was  particularly  fond  of  the  attraction  of  the 
place,  betook  too  freely  of  the  now  forbidden  nectars  and  ended  by 
smashing  up  most  of  the  furniture  within  reach,  whereupon  the  pro- 
prietor sent  him  a  bill  for  $1000  damages.  Two  days  later  the  gov- 


266          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

ernor  learned  officially,  to  his  unbounded  surprise,  that  gambling  was 
going  on  at  Coamo  Springs!  The  place  was  at  once  raided,  and  to- 
day the  most  model  of  old  ladies  may  visit  it  without  the  slightest  risk 
of  having  her  sensibilities  so  much  as  pin-pricked. 

I  came  near  forgetting  entirely,  however,  what  is  perhaps  the  most 
typical  town  of  Porto  Rico.  Aguadilla,  nestling  in  the  curve  of  a  wide 
bay  on  the  northwest  coast,  where  the  foot-hills  come  almost  down 
to  the  sea,  and  with  a  pretty  little  isle  in  the  hazy  offing,  has  much  the 
same  proportion  between  its  favored  few  and  its  poverty-stricken 
many  as  the  island  itself.  A  monument  a  mile  from  town  commemor- 
ates the  landing  of  Columbus  in  1493  to  obtain  water,  though  Aguada, 
a  bit  farther  south,  also  claims  that  honor.  The  distinctly  Spanish 
church,  too,  contains  beautiful  hand-oar ved  reproductions  in  wood 
of  Murillo's  "  Assumption "  and  "  Immaculate  Conception,"  note- 
worthy as  the  only  unquestionably  artistic  church  decorations  in  Porto 
Rico.  The  merely  human  traveler,  however,  will  fmd  these  things  of 
scant  interest  compared  to  the  vast  honeycomb  of  hovels  that  make  up 
all  but  the  heart  of  Aguadilla. 

The  hills,  as  I  have  said,  come  close  down  to  the  sea  here,  leaving 
little  room  for  the  pauperous  people  of  all  Porto  Rican  suburbs. 
Hence  those  of  Aguadilla  have^stacked  their  tiny  shacks  together  in 
the  narrow  rocky  canyons  between  the  mountain-flanking  railroad  and 
the  sea-level.  So  closely  are  these  hundreds  of  human  nests  crowded 
that  in  many  places  even  a  thin  man  can  pass  between  them  only  by 
advancing  sidewise.  Built  of  weather-blackened  bits  of  boxes,  most 
of  them  from  "  the  States,"  with  their  addresses  and  trademarks  still 
upon  them,  and  of  every  conceivable  piece  of  rubbish  that  can  deflect 
a  ray  of  sunshine  or  the  gaze  of  passers-by,  they  look  far  less  like 
dwellings  than  abandoned  kennels  thrown  into  one  great  garbage- 
heap.  Of  furnishing  they  have  almost  none,  not  even  a  chair  to  sit 
on  in  many  cases.  The  occupants  squat  upon  the  floor,  or  at  best  take 
turns  in  the  "  hammock,"  a  ragged  gunnysack  tied  at  both  ends  and 
stretched  from  corner  to  corner  of  the  usually  single  room.  A  few 
have  one  or  two  soiled  and  crippled  cots,  but  never  the  suggestion  of  a 
mosquitero,  though  the  mosquitos  hold  high  revel  even  by  day  in  this 
breathless  amphitheater.  For  wash-tubs  they  use  a  strip  of  yagua 
pinned  together  at  one  end  with  a  sliver  and  set  on  the  sloping  ground 
beneath  the  hut  to  keep  the  water  from  running  away  at  the  other. 
The  families  are  usually  large,  in  spite  of  an  appalling  infant  mortality, 


OUR  PORTO  RICO  267 

and  half  a  dozen  children  without  clothing  enough  between  them  to 
properly  cover  the  smallest  are  almost  certain  to  be  squalling,  quarrel- 
ing, and  rolling  about  the  pieced-together  floor  or  on  the  ground  be- 
neath it. 

For  the  hovels  are  always  precariously  set  up  on  pillars  of  broken 
stone  under  their  four  corners,  and  the  earth  under  them  is  the  family 
playground  and  washroom.  There  is  no  provision  whatever  for  sewer- 
age; water  must  be  lugged  up  the  steep  hillside  from  the  better  part 
of  the  town  below.  Break-neck  ladder-steps,  slippery  with  mud  and 
with  a  broken  rung  or  two,  connect  ground  and  doorway.  The  pov- 
erty of  Haiti,  where  at  least  there  is  spaciousness,  seems  slight  indeed 
compared  to  this. 

Yet  this  is  no  negro  quarter.  Many  of  the  inhabitants  are  of  pure 
Caucasian  blood,  and  the  majority  of  them  have  only  a  tinge  of  African 
color.  Features  and  characteristics  that  go  with  diligence  and  energy, 
with  success  in  life,  are  to  be  seen  on  every  hand.  Nor  is  it  a  com- 
munity of  alms-seekers.  It  toils  more  steadily  than  you  or  I  to  be 
self-supporting;  the  difficulty  is  to  find  something  at  which  to  toil. 
Scores  of  the  residents  own  their  solar,  or  patch  of  rock  on  which  their 
hut  stands;  many  own  the  hut  itself.  Others  pay  their  monthly  rental, 
though  they  live  for  days  on  a  handful  of  plantains  —  pathetic  rentals 
of  from  twenty  to  thirty  cents  a  month  for  the  solar  and  as  much  for 
the  hovel,  many  of  which  are  owned  by  proud  citizens  down  in  the 
white-collar  part  of  the  town. 

For  all  their  abject  poverty  these  hapless  people  are  smiling  and 
cheerful,  sorry  for  their  utter  want,  yet  never  ashamed  of  it,  con- 
vinced that  it  is  due  to  no  fault  of  their  own.  That  is  a  pleasing 
peculiarity  of  all  the  huddled  masses  of  Porto  Rico.  They  are  quite 
ready  to  talk,  too,  on  closely  personal  subjects  that  it  is  difficult  to 
bring  up  in  more  urbane  circles,  and  to  discuss  their  condition  in  a 
quaintly  impersonal  manner,  with  never  a  hint  of  whining. 

I  talked  with  an  old  woman  who  was  weaving  hats.  She  lived  alone, 
all  her  family  having  died,  of  under-nourishment,  no  doubt,  though 
she  called  it  something  else.  The  hat  she  was  at  work  upon  would 
be  sold  to  the  wholesalers  for  thirty  cents ;  it  was  almost  the  equal  of  the 
one  I  wore,  which  had  cost  five  dollars, —  and  the  material  for  two  of 
them  cost  her  twenty  cents.  She  could  barely  make  one  a  day,  what 
with  her  cooking  and  housework.  Cooking  of  what,  for  Heaven's 
sake?  Oh,  yams  and  tubers,  now  and  then  a  plantain  from  a  kind 
friend  she  had.  One  really  required  very  little  for  such  labor.  She 


268          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

smiled  upon  me  as  I  descended  her  sagging  ladder  and  wished  me  much 
prosperity. 

A  muscular  fellow  a  bit  farther  on,  white  of  skin  as  a  Scandinavian, 
was  "  a  peon  by  trade,"  but  there  was  seldom  work  to  be  had.  He 
sold  things  in  the  streets.  It  was  a  lucky  day  when  he  made  a  profit 
of  fifteen  cents.  His  wife  made  hats,  too.  With  three  children  there 
was  no  help  for  it,  much  as  he  would  like  to  support  his  family  unas- 
sisted. The  house?  No,  it  was  not  his  —  yet;  though  he  owned  the 
solar.  The  house  would  cost  $32;  meanwhile  he  was  paying  thirty 
cents  a  month  for  it. 

A  frail  little  woman  in  the  early  thirties  looked  up  from  her  lace- 
making  as  I  paused  in  her  doorway.  In  her  lap  was  a  small,  round, 
hard  cushion  with  scores  of  pins  stuck  in  it,  and  a  wooden  bobbin  at 
the  end  of  each  white  thread.  She  clicked  the  bits  of  wood  swiftly  as 
she  talked,  like  one  who  enjoyed  conversation,  but  could  not  afford 
to  lose  time  at  it.  Yes,  she  worked  all  day  and  usually  well  into  the 
night  —  nodding  at  a  wick  in  a  little  can  of  tallow.  By  doing  that  she 
could  make  a  whole  yard  of  lace,  and  get  eighty  cents  for  it.  It  took 
a  spool  and  a  third  of  thread  —  American  thread,  mira  usted  —  at  ten 
cents  a  spool.  Fortunately,  she  was  young  and  strong,  though  her 
eyes  hurt  sometimes,  and  people^  said  this  work  was  bad  on  the  lungs. 
But  she  had  her  mother  to  support,  who  was  too  old  to  do  much  of 
anything  —  the  toothless  crone,  grinning  amiably,  slouched  forward 
out  of  the  "  next  house,"  which  was  really  another  room  like  the  in- 
credibly piece-meal  shack  in  which  I  stood,  though  with  a  separate 
roof.  The  rent  of  the  two  was  thirty  cents ;  they  were  worth  thirteen 
dollars  —  the  lace-maker  mentioned  that  enormous  sum  with  a  catch 
in  her  breath.  Then  she  had  a  little  girl.  There  had  been  four  chil- 
dren, but  three  had  died.  Her  husband  was  gone,  too  —  Oh,  yes,  she 
had  been  really  married.  They  had  paid  $3-75  for  the  ceremony. 
She  had  heard  that  the  Protestants  did  it  cheaper,  but  of  course  when 
one  is  born  a  Catholic.  .  .  .  Some  women  in  the  quarter  were  "  only 
married  by  God,"  but  that  was  not  their  fault.  She  never  had  time 
to  go  to  mass,  but  she  had  been  to  confession  four  times.  There  had 
been  no  charge  for  that.  Her  daughter  —  the  frizzly-headed  little  tot 
of  six  or  seven  had  come  in  munching  a  mashed  boniato  in  a  tiny 
earthen  bowl,  with  a  broken  spoon  —  went  to  school  every  day.  She 
hoped  for  a  great  future  for  her.  She  had  gone  to  school  herself, 
but  she  "  was  n't  given  to  learn."  She  could  n't  get  the  child  the  food 
the  teacher  said  was  good  for  her.  Even  rice  was  sixteen  cents  a 


OUR  PORTO  RICO  269 

pound,  and  those  —  pointing  to  three  or  four  miserable  roots  in  the 
burlap  "  hammock  " —  cost  from  one  to  four  cents  apiece  now.  And 
clothing!  Would  I  just  feel  the  miserable  stuff  her  waist  was  made 
of  —  it  was  miserable  indeed,  though  snowy  white.  Then  she  had 
to  buy  a  board  now  and  then  for  two  or  three  cents  to  patch  the  house ; 
the  owner  would  never  do  it.  Once  she  had  tried  working  in  a  ware- 
house down  by  the  wharf.  The  Spaniards  said  they  paid  a  dollar  a 
day  for  cleaning  coffee  —  because  the  law  would  not  let  them  pay  less, 
or  work  women  more  than  eight  hours  a  day.  Yet  the  cleaners  must 
do  two  bags  a  day  or  they  did  n't  get  the  dollar,  and  no  woman  could 
do  that  if  she  worked  ten,  or  even  twelve,  hours.  Clever  fellows,  those 
peninsular es I  The  little  basket  of  oranges  in  the  doorway?  Oh,  she 
sold  those  to  people  in  the  gully,  when  any  of  them  could  buy.  Some 
days  she  made  nothing  on  them,  at  other  times  as  much  as  four  cents 
profit.  But  "  that  goes  for  my  vice,  for  I  smoke  cigarettes,"  she  con- 
cluded, as  if  confessing  to  some  great  extravagance. 

Down  in  the  plaza  that  night  a  score  of  ragged  men  lolled  about  a 
cement  bench  discussing  wages  and  the  cost  of  food.  Beans  cost  a 
fortune  now ;  sugar  was  sixteen  cents ;  coffee,  their  indispensable  coffee, 
thirty-two.  They  did  not  mention  bread;  the  Porto  Rican  of  the 
masses  seldom  indulges  in  that  luxury.  And  with  the  sugar  centrals 
in  the  neighborhood  paying  scarcely  a  dollar  a  day,  even  when  one 
could  find  work !  "  I  tell  you,  we  working-men  are  too  tame,"  con- 
cluded one  of  them ;  "  we  should  fight,  rob.  .  .  ."  But  he  said  it  in  a 
half-joking,  harmless  way  that  is  characteristic  of  his  class  through 
all  Porto  Rico. 

It  is  time,  however,  that  we  leave  the  towns  and  get  out  among  the 
jibaros,  as  the  countrymen  are  called,  from  a  Spanish  word  for  a 
domesticated  animal  that  has  gone  wild  again. 

The  American  Railroad  of  Porto  Rico  was  originally  French,  as  its 
manager  is  still.  Though  it  is  narrow-gauge,  it  has  a  comfort  and  aseo 
unknown  even  in  Cuba,  a  cleanliness  combined  with  all  the  smaller 
American  conveniences,  ice  water,  sanitary  paper  cups,  blotter-roll 
towels  —  prohibition  has  at  least  done  away  with  the  yelping  train- 
boy  and  made  it  possible  to  drink  nature's  beverage  without  exciting 
comment.  Its  fares  are  higher  than  in  the  United  States, —  three  cents 
a  kilometer  in  first  and  2*4  in  the  plain  little  second-class  coaches  with 
their  hard  wooden  benches  that  make  up  most  of  the  train.  The 
single  first-class  car  is  rarely  more  than  half  filled,  for  all  its  comfort- 


270          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

able  swivel  chairs.  Automobiles  and  the  lay  of  the  land,  that  makes 
Ponce  less  than  half  as  far  over  the  mountain  as  by  rail,  accounts  for 
this;  though  by  night  the  sleeping-car  at  the  rear  is  fully  occupied  by 
men,  usually  men  only,  who  have  adopted  the  American  custom  of 
saving  their  days  for  business.  The  sleeping  compartments  are  ar- 
ranged in  ship's-cabin  size  and  run  diagonally  across  the  car,  to  leave 
room  for  a  passageway  within  the  narrow  coach.  These  two-bunk 
cabins  are  furnished  with  individual  toilet  facilities,  thermos  bottles  of 
ice  water,  and  electric  lights,  and  many  Porto  Ricans  have  actually 
learned  that  an  open  window  does  not  necessarily  mean  a  slumberer 
turned  to  a  corpse  by  morning.  The  trainmen  are  polite  and  obliging 
in  an  unostentatious  way  that  make  our  own  seem  ogres  by  comparison. 
In  short,  it  is  a  diligent,  honest  little  railroad  suiting  the  size  of  the 
country  and  with  no  other  serious  fault  than  a  tendency  to  stop  again 
at  another  station  almost  before  it  has  gotten  well  under  way. 

For  nearly  an  hour  the  train  circles  San  Juan  bay,  the  gleaming, 
heaped-up  capital,  or  its  long  line  of  lights,  according  to  the  hour,  re- 
maining almost  within  rifle-shot  until  the  crowded  suburbs  of  Bayamon 
spring  up  on  each  side.  Then  come  broadening  expanses  of  cane, 
with  throngs  of  men  and  women  working  in  the  fields,  interpersed 
with  short  stretches  of  arid  sand,  or  meadows  bright  with  pink  morn- 
ing-glories and  dotted  with  splendid  reddish  cattle.  Beyond  comes 
a  fruit  district.  Under  Spanish  rule  scarcely  enough  fruit  was  grown 
in  Porto  Rico  to  supply  the  local  demand.  The  Americans,  struck 
with  the  excellency  of  the  wild  fruit,  particularly  of  the  citrus  variety, 
began  to  develop  this  almost  unknown  industry.  But  among  the 
pathetic  sights  of  the  island  is  to  see  acre  after  acre  of  grape-fruit, 
unsurpassed  in  size  and  quality,  rotting  on  the  trees  or  on  the  ground 
beneath  them.  While  Americans  are  paying  fabulous  prices  for  their 
favorite  breakfast  fruit,  many  a  grower  in  Porto  Rico  is  hiring  men 
to  haul  away  the  locally  despised  toronjas  and  bury  them.  Lack  of 
transportation  is  the  chief  answer  —  that  and  a  bit  of  market  manipula- 
tion. Not  long  ago  the  discovery  that  the  bottled  juice  of  grapefruit 
and  pineapple  made  a  splendid  beverage  led  a  company  to  undertake 
what  should  be  a  booming  enterprise,  with  the  thirsty  mainland  as 
chief  consumers.  But  the  promoters  quickly  struck  an  unexpected 
snag.  The  available  supply  of  bottles,  strange  to  relate,  was  quickly 
exhausted,  and  to-day  the  company  manager  gazes  pensively  from  his 
windows  across  prolific,  yet  unproductive,  orchards. 

The  pale-green  of  cane-fields  becomes  monotonous;  then  at  length 


OUR  PORTO  RICO  271 

the  blue  sea  breaks  again  on  the  horizon.  Beyond  Arecibo  the  rail- 
road runs  close  along  the  shore,  with  almost  continuous  villages  of 
shaggy  huts  half  hidden  among  the  endless  cocoanut-grove  that  girdles 
Porto  Rico,  the  waves  lapping  at  the  roots  of  the  outmost  trees.  These 
without  exception  are  encircled  by  broad  bands  of  tin.  During  an 
epidemic  of  bubonic  plague  the  mongoose  was  introduced  into  the 
island,  as  into  nearly  all  the  West  Indies,  to  exterminate  the  rats. 
The  rodents  developed  new  habits  and  took  to  climbing  the  slanting 
cocoanut  trees,  which  afforded  both  food  and  a  place  of  refuge.  The 
bands  of  tin  have  served  their  purpose.  To-day  both  rats  and  snakes 
are  scarce  in  Porto  Rico,  but  the  inhabitants  discovered  too  late  that 
the  chicken-loving  mongoose  may  be  an  even  greater  pest  than  those 
it  has  replaced.  Cocoanuts  brought  more  than  one  Porto  Rican  a 
quick  fortune  during  the  war.  Now  that  the  gas-mask  has  degener- 
ated into  a  mural  decoration,  however,  immense  heaps  of  the  fibrous 
husks  lie  shriveling  away  where  the  armistice  overtook  them,  and  even 
the  favorable  state  of  the  copra  market  seems  incapable  of  shaking 
the  growers  out  of  their  racial  apathy. 

Several  pretty  towns  on  knolls  against  a  background  of  sea  attract 
the  eye  as  the  train  bends  southward  along  the  west  coast.  Below 
Quebradillas  the  railroad  swings  in  a  great  horseshoe  curve  down  into 
a  little  sea-level  valley,  plunges  through  two  tunnels,  and  crawls  along 
the  extreme  edge  of  a  bold  precipitous  coast,  past  mammoth  tumbled 
rocks,  and  all  but  wetting  its  rails  in  the  dashing  surf.  A  few  tobacco 
patches  spring  up  here,  where  the  mountains  crowd  the  cane-fields  out 
of  existence,  women  and  children  patiently  hoeing,  and  men  plowing 
the  pale-red  soil  behind  brow-yoked  oxen.  Crippled  Mayagiiez  drags 
slowly  by,  new  seas  of  cane  appear,  then  the  splendid  plain  of  San 
German,  with  its  vista  of  grazing  cattle  and  its  pepinos  gordos,  reddish 
calabashes  clinging  to  their  climbing  vines  like  huge  sausages.  Beyond, 
there  is  little  to  see,  except  canefields  and  the  Caribbean,  until  we  rumble 
into  Ponce,  spread  away  up  its  foothills  like  a  city  laid  out  in  the  sun 
to  dry.  On  the  southeastern  horizon  lies  an  island  the  natives  call 
Caja  de  Muertos — "  deadman's  box,"  and  it  looks  indeed  like  a  coffin, 
with  the  lighthouse  on  its  highest  point  resembling  a  candle  set  there 
by  some  pious  mourner.  Local  tradition  has  it  that  this  is  the  original 
of  Stevenson's  "  Treasure  Island." 

The  train  turns  back  from  Ponce,  but  the  railroad  does  not,  and 
one  may  rumble  on  behind  a  smaller  engine  to  Guayama.  Some  day 
the  company  hopes  to  get  a  franchise  for  the  eastern  end  of  the  island 


272          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

and  encircle  it  entirely.  A  private  railroad  covers  a  third  of  the  re- 
maining distance  as  it  is.  But  the  traveler  bent  on  circumnavigating 
all  Porto  Rico  must  trust  to  guagnas,  an  automobile,  or  his  own  ex- 
ertions through  this  region,  and  swinging  in  a  great  curve  around  the 
Luquillo  range,  with  the  cloud-capped  summit  of  the  island  purple  and 
hazy  above  him,  eventually  fetches  up  once  more  in  sea-lashed  San 
Juan.  By  this  time,  I  warrant,  he  will  long  for  other  landscapes  than 
spreading  canefields. 

Sugar  was  shipped  from  Porto  Rico  as  early  as  1533,  but  the  Span- 
iards gave  it  less  attention  than  they  did  coffee.  For  one  thing  their 
methods  were  antiquated.  Two  upright  wooden  rollers  under  a 
thatched  roof,  turned  by  a  yoke  or  two  of  oxen,  was  the  customary 
cane-crusher.  Here  and  there  one  of  these  may  be  seen  to  this  day. 
The  big  open  iron  kettles  in  which  they  boiled  the  syrup  are  still  strewn 
around  the  coast,  some  of  them  occupied  in  the  plebeian  task  of  catch- 
ing rain-water  from  hovel  roofs,  many  more  rusting  away  like  aban- 
doned artillery  of  a  by-gone  age.  All  the  coastal  belt  is  dotted  with 
the  ruins  of  old  brick  sugar-mills,  their  stocky  square  chimneys  broken 
off  at  varying  heights  from  the  ground,  like  aged  tombs  of  methods 
that  have  passed  away.  They  do  not  constitute  a  direct  loss,  but  rather 
unavoidable  sacrifices  to  the  exacting  god  of  modern  progress,  for 
barely  sixty  per  cent,  of  the  sugar  contents  was  extracted  by  the  con- 
trivances of  those  ox-gaited,  each-planter-for-himself  days. 

It  is  natural  that  combinations  of  former  estates,  with  immense  cen- 
tral engenios,  should  have  followed  American  possession.  To-day  four 
great  companies  control  the  sugar  output  of  Porto  Rico,  from  Guanica 
on  the  west  to  Fajardo  in  the  east.  Like  the  mammoth  central  of 
Cuba,  they  reckon  their  production  in  hundreds  of  thousands  of  bags 
and  utilize  all  the  aids  of  modern  science  in  their  processes.  Their 
problem,  however,  is  more  complex  than  that  in  the  almost  virgin 
lands  of  Cuba  and  Santo  Domingo.  The  acreage  available  for  cane 
production  is  definitely  limited;  virtually  all  of  it  has  been  cultivated 
for  centuries.  Charred  stumps  and  logs  of  recent  deforestation  are 
unknown  in  Porto  Rican  canefields.  Instead  there  is  the  acrid  scent 
of  patent  fertilizers  and,  particularly  in  the  south,  elaborate  systems  of 
irrigation.  After  each  cutting  the  fields  must  be  replanted ;  in  Cuba 
and  the  Dominican  Republic  they  reproduce  for  eight  to  twelve  years. 
A  few  areas  never  before  devoted  to  cane  have  recently  been  planted, 
but  they  are  chiefly  small  interior  valleys  and  the  loftier  foothills  well 


OUR  PORTO  RICO  273 

back  from  the  coast.  For  the  Porto  Rican  sugar  producer  is  forced 
to  encroach  upon  the  mountains  in  a  way  that  his  luckier  fellows  of  the 
larger  islands  to  the  westward  would  scorn,  and  his  fields  of  cane  are 
sometimes  as  billowy  as  a  turbulent  Atlantic. 

Porto  Rico  was  in  the  midst  of  a  wide-spread  strike  among  the  sugar 
workers  during  our  stay  there.  All  through  this  busiest  month  of 
February  there  had  been  constant  parades  of  strikers  along  the  coast 
roads  by  day  and  thronged  mitines  in  the  towns  each  evening.  The 
paraders  were  with  few  exceptions  law-abiding  and  peaceful  despite 
the  scores  of  red  flags  that  followed  the  huge  Stars  and  Stripes  at  the 
head  of  each  procession.  When  the  authorities  protested,  the  strike 
leaders  explained  that  red  had  long  stood  as  the  symbol  of  the  laboring 
class  in  Spanish  countries.  They  were  astounded  to  learn  that  to 
people  beyond  the  blue  sea  that  surrounds  them,  the  color  meant  law- 
lessness and  revolt  by  violence,  and  they  lost  no  time  in  adopting  in- 
stead a  green  banner.  When  this  in  turn  was  found  to  have  a  similar 
significance  in  another  island  somewhere  far  away,  they  chose  a  white 
flag.  It  was  not  a  matter  of  one  color  or  another,  they  said,  but  of 
sufficient  food  to  feed  their  hungry  families. 

Negro  spell-binders  from  the  cities,  evil-faced  fellows  for  the  most 
part,  whose  soft  hands  showed  no  evidence  of  ever  having  wielded  a 
cane-knife,  harangued  the  barefoot  multitudes  in  moonlighted  town 
streets.  When  the  head  of  the  movement  was  taken  to  task  by  neutral 
fellow-citizens  for  not  choosing  lieutenants  more  capable  of  arousing 
general  public  sympathy  and  confidence,  he  replied  with  a  fervent,  "  I 
wish  to  God  I  could ! "  But  the  ranks  of  Porto  Rican  workmen  do 
not  easily  yield  men  of  even  the  modicum  of  education  required  to 
spread-eagle  a  public  meeting.  Held  down  for  centuries  to  almost 
the  level  of  serfs,  they  have  little  notion  of  how  to  use  that  modern 
double-edged  weapon,  the  strike.  They  do  not  put  their  heads  to- 
gether, formulate  their  demands,  and  carry  them  to  their  employers. 
Inert  by  nature  and  training,  they  plod  on  until  some  outside  agitator 
comes  along  and  tells  them  they  shall  get  higher  wages  if  only  they 
will  follow  his  leadership,  whisper  to  one  another  that  it  would  be 
nice  to  have  more  money,  and  quit  work,  with  no  funds  to  support 
themselves  in  idleness  or  any  other  preparation.  It  is  the  old  irre- 
sponsibility, the  lack  of  foreplanning  common  to  the  tropics.  Then, 
that  they  may  not  be  the  losers  whichever  side  wins,  they  strive  to 
keep  on  good  terms  with  their  employers  by  telling  them  that  only  the 
fear  of  violence  from  their  fellows  keeps  them  from  coming  to  work, 


274  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

being  so  docile  by  nature  that  they  would  not  hurt  even  the  feelings 
of  their  superiors. 

This  time  the  strikers  had  been  encouraged  by  what  they  mistook 
to  be  federal  support.  The  American  Federation  of  Labor  had  sent 
down  as  investigating  delegates  two  men  of  forceful  Irish  wit  who 
were  naturally  appalled  to  find  their  new  fellow-citizens  living  under 
conditions  unequalled  even  among  their  ancestral  peat-bogs.  What 
they  did  not  recognize  was  that  all  over  Latin-America,  even  where  land 
is  virtually  unlimited  and  there  are  no  corporations  to  "  exploit "  the 
populace,  the  masses  live  in  much  the  same  thatched-hut  degradation. 
Their  familiarity  with  the  Porto  Rican  environment  was  as  negative 
as  their  knowledge  of  the  Spanish  language ;  they  made  the  almost  uni- 
versal American  mistake  of  thinking  that  what  is  true  of  the  United 
States  is  equally  so  of  all  other  countries,  and  their  straight-forward 
national  temperament  made  them,  no  match  for  the  wily,  intricate 
machinations  of  native  politicians. 

Porto  Rico  had  not  been  so  lively  since  the  Americans  ousted  the 
Spaniards.  I  had  an  opportunity  of  hearing  both  sides  of  the  case, 
for  with  the  privilege  of  the  mere  observer  I  was  equally  welcome  — 
whatever  the  degree  may  have  been  —  in  the  touring  car  of  the  dele- 
gates and  at  the  dinner-tables  of  the  sugar  managers. 

"  These  simple  fellows  from  the  States,"  said  the  latter,  "  think  they 
can  solve  the  problem  of  over-population  by  giving  $2.50  a  day  to  all 
laborers,  good  or  bad,  weak  or  strong.  The  result  would  be  to  drive 
the  best  workmen  out  of  the  country,  and  leave  us,  our  stock-holders, 
and  the  consumers,  victims  of  the  poorest.  Like  the  labor  union  move- 
ment everywhere,  it  would  give  the  advantage  to  the  weakling,  the 
scamper,  the  time-killer.  We  have  men  in  our  fields  who  earn  $3.50 
a  day,  and  who  will  tell  you  they  do  not  know  why  on  earth  they  are 
striking.  Men  who  can  cut  six  tons  of  cane  a  day  on  piece-work  will 
not  cut  one  ton  at  day  wages.  Then  there  are  men  so  full  of  the  hook- 
worm that  they  have  n't  the  strength  to  earn  one  dollar  a  day.  We 
centrals  insist  on  keeping  the  ajuste  system  that  has  always  prevailed  in 
Porto  Rico  —  the  letting  of  work  by  contract  to  self-appointed  gang 
leaders;  and  we  will  not  sign  a  minimum  wage  scale  because  there  is 
no  responsible  person  to  see  that  the  terms  are  carried  out  on  the 
laborer's  side.  We  refuse  to  deal  with  the  strikers'  committees  becaust 
we  cannot  listen  to  a  lot  of  bakers  and  barbers  from  the  towns  who 
do  not  know  sugarcane  from  swamp  reeds.  There  is  nothing  but 
politics  back  of  it  all  any  way.  This  is  a  presidential  year;  that  ex- 


OUR  PORTO  RICO  275 

plains  the  sudden  interest  of  politicians  in  the  poor  down-trodden 
laboring  class.  Our  men  earn  at  least  $1.75  a  day  —  and  they  seldom 
work  in  the  fields  after  two  in  the  afternoon.  Besides  that  we  give 
every  employee  a  twenty  per  cent,  bonus,  a  house  to  live  in  if  he 
chooses,  free  medical  attention,  half-time  when  they  are  sick,  and  the 
privilege  of  buying  their  supplies  in  our  company  stores  at  cost.  Cuba 
pays  higher  wages,  but  the  companies  get  most  of  it  back  through 
their  stores.  We  run  ours  at  a  loss;  I  can  prove  it  to  you  by  our 
books ;  and  we  give  much  to  charity.  Hungry  indeed !  Do  you  know 
that  our  biggest  sales  to  our  laborers  are  costly  perfumes  ?  They  may 
starve  their  children,  but  they  can  always  feed  fresh  eggs  to  their 
fighting-cocks.  There  is  hardly  a  man  of  them  that  is  not  keeping 
two  or  three  women.  If  we  paid  our  men  twice  what  we  do,  the  only 
result  would  be  that  they  would  lay  off  every  other  day.  Let  them 
strike !  We  can  always  get  hillmen  from  the  interior  or  men  from 
Aguadilla  who  are  only  too  glad  to  work  for  even  less  than  we  are 
paying  now." 

I  found  Santiago  Iglesias  literally  up  to  his  ears  in  work  at  the 
headquarters  of  the  Socialist-Labor  party,  a  few  doors  from  the  gov- 
ernor's palace.  About  him  swarmed  several  of  the  foxy-faced  in- 
dividuals he  had  himself  privately  deplored  as  assistants.  A  powerful 
man  in  the  prime  of  life,  of  pure  Spanish  blood,  the  radical  Porto 
Rican  senator  was  quite  ready  to  recapitulate  once  more  his  view  of 
the  situation.  If  he  was  "playing  politics" — and  what  elective  gov- 
ernment official  is  not  every  time  he  opens  his  mouth  or  turns  over 
in  bed?  —  he  gave  at  least  the  impression  of  being  genuinely  distressed 
at  the  condition  of  Porto  Rico's  poverty-bred  masses.  We  had  con- 
versed for  some  time  in  Spanish  before  he  surprised  me  by  breaking 
forth  into  a  vigorous  English,  amusing  for  its  curious  errors  of  pro- 
nunciation. The  minimum  wage  demanded,  for  instance,  which  re- 
curred in  almost  every  sentence,  always  emerged  from  his  lips  with 
the  second  f  transformed  into  an  s.  That  is  the  chief  trouble  with 
Santiago,  according  to  his  opponents  —  his  methods  are  "  too  fisty." 

"  There  has  been  a  vast  improvement  in  personal  liberty  in  Porto 
Rico  under  American  rule,"  he  began.  "  But  the  island  has  been  sur- 
rendered to  Wall  Street,  to  the  heartless  corporations  that  always 
profit  most  by  American  expansion.  Moreover,  American  rule  has 
forced  upon  us  American  prices  —  it  always  does  —  without  giving 
our  people  the  corresponding  income.  Formerly  all  our  wealth  went 
to  Spain.  Now  it  goes  to  the  States,  but  with  this  difference,—  under 


276          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

Spanish  rule  wages  were  low  but  the  employers  were  paternal;  they 
thought  occasionally  about  their  peons.  At  least  the  workers  got 
enough  to  eat.  The  corporations  that  have  taken  their  place  are  utterly 
impersonal ;  the  workmen  who  sweat  in  the  sun  for  them  are  no  more 
to  the  far  away  stock-holders  than  the  canes  that  pass  between  the 
rollers  of  their  sugar-mills.  When  they  get  these  magnificent  returns 
on  their  investment  do  the  Americans  who  hold  stocks  and  bonds  in 
our  great  centrals  ever  ask  themselves  how  the  men  who  are  actually 
earning  them  are  getting  on?  No,  they  sit  tight  in  their  comfortable 
church  pews  giving  thanks  to  the  Lord  with  a  freer  conscience  than 
ever  did  the  Spanish  conquistadores,  for  they  are  too  far  away  ever 
to  see  the  sufferings  of  their  peons. 

"  The  sugar  companies  can  produce  sugar  at  a  hundred  dollars  a 
ton;  they  are  getting  two  hundred  and  forty.  The  common  stock  of 
the  four  big  ones,  paid  from  fifty-six  to  seventy  dollars  last  year  on 
every  hundred  dollars  invested,  not  to  mention  a  lot  of  extra  dividends, 
and  their  profits  for  this  zafra  will  be  far  higher.  The  island  is  being 
pumped  dry  of  its  resources  and  nothing  is  being  put  back  into  it.  In 
the  States  not  twenty  per  cent,  of  the  national  income  goes  out  of  the 
country ;  the  rest  goes  back  into  reproduction.  In  Porto  Rico  seventy 
per  cent,  goes  to  foreigners,  and  of  the  thirty  left  wealthy  Porto  Ricans 
spend  a  large  amount  abroad.  -.We  do  not  want  our  land  all  used  to 
enrich  non-resident  stock-holders;  we  need  it  to  feed  our  own  people. 
There  is  not  corn-meal  and  beans  enough  now  to  go  round,  because 
the  big  sugar  centrals  hold  all  the  fertile  soil.  They  have  bought  all 
the  land  about  them,  even  the  foot-hills,  so  that  the  people  cannot 
plant  anything,  but  must  work  for  the  companies.  Stock-holders  are 
entitled  to  a  fair  profit  on  the  capital  actually  invested  —  actually,  I 
say  —  and  something  for  the  risk  taken  —  which  certainly  is  not  great. 
But  the  Porto  Ricans,  the  men,  and  women,  and  the  scrawny  children 
who  do  the  actual  work  in  the  broiling  tropical  sun  should  get  the  rest 
of  it,  in  wages.  We  should  tax  non-resident  sugar  companies  ten  per 
cent,  of  their  income  for  the  improvement  of  Porto  Rico;  we  should 
borrow  several  millions  in  the  States  and  give  our  poor  people  land 
to  cultivate,  and  pay  the  loan  back  out  of  that  tax.  But  what  can  we 
do?  The  politicians,  the  high  officials  are  all  interested  in  sugar. 
They  and  the  corporations  form  the  invisible  government ;  they  are  the 
law,  the  police,  the  rulers,  the  patriots.  Patriots!  The  instant  the 
Porto  Rican  income-tax  was  set  at  half  that  in  the  States  the  corpora- 
tions made  Porto  Rico  their  legal  residence.  When  the  federal  gov- 


OUR  PORTO  RICO  277- 

ernment  would  not  stand  for  the  trick  and  forced  them  to  pay  the 
balance  they  cried  unto  high  Heaven.  Porto  Rican  law  forbids  any 
company  or  individual  to  own  more  than  five  hundred  acres.  They 
get  around  the  law  by  trickery,  by  dividing  the  holdings  among  the 
members  of  the  same  family,  by  making  fake  divisions  of  company 
stock.  The  Secretary  of  War  and  other  federal  officials  come  down 
here  to  '  investigate.'  They  motor  across  our  beautiful  mountains, 
have  two  or  three  banquets  in  the  homes  of  the  rich  or  the  central 
managers,  and  the  newspapers  in  the  States  shout  '  Great  Prosperity 
in  Porto  Rico ! '  I  tell  you  it  is  the  criminal  lack  of  equity,  the  same 
old  blindness  of  the  landed  classes  the  world  over  and  in  all  ages  that 
is  driving  Porto  Rico  into  the  camp  of  the  violent  radicals. 

"  You  admire  our  fine  roads.  All  visitors  do.  You  do  not  realize 
that  they  were  built  because  the  corporations  needed  them.  And  did 
we  pay  for  them  by  taxing  the  corporations?  We  did  not.  We  paid 
for  them  by  government  bonds  —  that  is,  we  charged  them  up  to  the 
children  of  the  peons.  You  have  probably  found  that  we  have  inade- 
quate school  facilities.  The  corporations,  the  invisible  government, 
do  not  want  the  masses  educated,  because  then  they  would  not  have 
left  any  easily  manipulated  laboring  class.  Nor  do  I  take  much  stock 
in  this  over-population  idea.  At  least  I  should  like  to  see  the  half 
million  untilled  acres  turned  over  to  the  people  before  I  will  believe 
emigration  is  necessary.  Sixty  per  cent,  of  Porto  Rico  is  uncultivated, 
yet  eighty  per  cent,  of  the  population  goes  to  bed  hungry  every  night 
in  the  year.  Then  there  is  this  cry  of  hookworm.  Do  not  let  the 
Rockefeller  Foundation,  a  direct  descendant  of  the  capitalists,  tell  you 
lies  about  '  anemia.'  The  anemia  of  Porto  Rico  comes  from  no 
worm,  but  from  the  fact  that  the  people  are  always  hungry.  It  is 
the  sordid  miserliness  of  corporations,  bent  on  keeping  our  peons  re- 
duced to  the  level  of  serfs,  in  order  that  they  may  always  have  a  cheap 
supply  of  labor,  that  is  the  fundamental  cause  of  the  misery  of  Porto 
Rico,  of  the  naked,  barefoot,  hungry,  schoolless,  homeless  desolation  of 
the  working  classes." 

The  calm  and  neutral  observer,  neither  underfed  nor  blessed  with 
the  task  of  clipping  sugar-stock  coupons,  detects  a  certain  amount  of 
froth  on  the  statements  of  both  parties  to  the  controversy  in  Porto  Rico. 
But  he  cannot  but  wonder  why  the  sweat-stained  laborers  in  the  corn- 
fields should  be  seen  wearily  tramping  homeward  to  a  one-room  thatched 
hovel  to  share  a  few  boiled  roots  with  a  slattern  woman  and  a  swarm 
of  thin-shanked  children  while  the  Americans  who  direct  them  from 


278          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

the  armchair  comfort  of  fan-cooled  offices  stroll  toward  capacious 
bungalows,  pausing  on  the  way  for  a  game  of  tennis  in  the  company 
compound,  and  sit  down  to  a  faultless  dinner  amid  all  that  appeals 
to  the  aesthetic  senses.  Least  of  all  can  he  reconcile  the  vision  of 
other  Americans,  whose  only  part  in  the  production  of  sugar  is  the 
collecting  of  dividends,  rolling  about  the  island  in  luxurious  touring 
cars,  with  the  sight  of  the  toil-worn,  ragged  workers  whose  uncouth 
appearance  arouses  the  haughty  travelers  to  snorts  of  scorn  or  falsetto 
shrieks  of  "  how  picturesque." 

The  problem  in  Porto  Rico,  as  the  reader  has  long  since  suspected,  is 
the  antithesis  of  that  in  Santo  Domingo.  In  the  latter  island  the  diffi- 
culty is  to  get  laborers  enough  to  develop  the  country;  in  the  former 
it  is  to  find  labor  enough  to  occupy  the  swarming  population.  Barely 
three-fourths  of  a  million  people  are  scattered  through  the  broad  in- 
sular wilderness  to  the  westward ;  the  census  of  1920  shows  little 
Porto  Rico  crowded  with  1,263,474  inhabitants,  that  is  nearly  four 
hundred  persons  to  the  square  mile.  There  are  several  reasons  for  this 
discrepancy;  for  one  thing  Santo  Domingo  has  been  fighting  itself 
for  generations,  while  Porto  Rico  has  never  had  a  revolution.  The 
obvious  solution  of  the  problem  has  two  serious  drawbacks.  The 
Dominicans  do  not  welcome  immigration;  they  wish  to  keep  their 
country  to  themselves.  The  Porto  Rican  is  inordinately  fond  of  his 
birthplace.  Send  him  to  the  most  distant  part  of  the  world  and  he 
is  sure  sooner  or  later  to  come  back  to  his  beloved  Borinquen.  Emi- 
gration from  the  island  can  reach  even  moderate  success  only  when 
entire  families  are  sent.  The  letters  of  Porto  Rican  soldiers  no  nearer 
the  front  than  Florida  or  Panama  were  filled  with  wails  of  homesickness 
that  would  have  been  pitiful  had  they  not  been  tinged  with  what  to  the 
unemotional  Anglo-Saxon  was  a  suggestion  of  the  ludicrous. 

There  is  a  Japanese  effect  in  the  density  of  population  of  our  little 
West  Indian  colony.  When  the  traveler  has  motored  for  hours  with- 
out once  getting  out  of  sight  of  human  habitations,  when  he  has  noted 
how  the  unpainted  little  shacks  speckle  the  steepest  hillside,  even  among 
the  high  mountains,  when  he  has  seen  the  endless  clusters  of  hovels  that 
surround  every  town,  whether  of  the  coast  or  the  interior,  he  will  come 
to  realize  the  crowded  condition.  If  he  is  a  trifle  observant,  he  will 
also  see  everywhere  signs  of  the  scarcity  of  work.  Men  lounging  in 
the  doors  of  their  huts  in  the  middle  of  the  day,  surrounded  by  pale 
women  and  children  sucking  a  joint  of  sugar-cane,  are  not  always 


OUR  PORTO  RICO  279 

loafers ;  in  many  cases  they  have  nowhere  to  go  and  work.  While  the 
women  toil  at  making  lace,  drawn-work,  or  hats,  the  males  turn  their 
hands  to  anything  that  the  incessant  struggle  for  livelihood  suggests. 
The  man  who  spends  two  days  in  weaving  a  laundry  basket  and  plods 
fifteen  or  twenty  miles  to  sell  it  for  sixty  cents  is  only  one  of  a  thou- 
sand commonplace  sights  along  the  island  highways. 

A  job  is  a  prize  in  Porto  Rico.  If  one  is  offered,  applicants  swarm; 
many  a  man  "  lays  off  "  in  order  to  lend  his  job  to  his  brother,  his 
cousin,  or  his  compadre.  Naturally,  employers  take  advantage  of  this 
condition.  The  American  labor  delegates  told  the  chief  of  police  that 
he  should  be  the  first  to  lead  his  men  on  strike,  for  certainly  he  could 
not  keep  them  honest  at  forty-five  dollars  a  month. 

"  Oh,  yes,  I  can,"  retorted  the  chief,  "  for  while  we  have  barely  eight 
hundred  on  the  force,  there  are  twelve  thousand  on  the  waiting-list,  and 
every  policeman  knows  that  if  he  is  fired,  he  will  have  to  go  back  to 
punching  bullocks  at  a  third  as  much."  Mozos  and  chambermaids  in 
the  best  hotels  seldom  get  more  than  five  dollars  a  month.  Street-car 
men  get  from  sixteen  to  twenty-five  cents  an  hour,  depending  on  the 
length  of  service.  In  a  large  clothing  factory  of  Mayagiiez,  fitted  with 
motor-run  sewing-machines,  only  a  few  of  the  women  get  a  dollar  a 
day;  the  majority  average  fifty  cents.  The  law,  of  course,  requires 
that  they  be  paid  a  minimum  wage  of  a  dollar;  but  what  is  a  mere 
law  among  a  teeming  population  which  the  Spaniards  spent  four  cen- 
turies in  training  to  be  manso  and  uncomplaining?  The  favorite  trick 
is  to  pay  the  dollar,  and  then  fine  the  women  fifty  cents  for  not  having 
done  sufficient  work.  Among  the  regrettable  sights  of  the  island  are 
groups  of  callous  emissaries  frequenting  the  leading  hotels  who  have 
been  sent  down  as  agents  of  certain  American  department  stores  to 
reap  advantage  from  the  local  poverty.  These  comisionistas  motor 
about  the  island,  placing  orders  with  the  wretched  native  women,  but 
by  piece-work,  you  may  be  sure,  to  avoid  the  requirement  of  paying 
a  dollar  a  day.  American  women  who  are  paying  several  times  what 
they  once  did  for  Porto  Rican  lace,  blouses,  and  drawn-work,  may  fancy 
that  some  of  this  increase  goes  to  the  humble  mujeres  who  do  the  work. 
Not  at  all.  They  are  still  toiling  in  their  miserable  little  huts  at  the 
same  ludicrous  prices,  while  their  products  are  being  sold  on  the 
"  bargain  "  counters  in  our  large  cities,  at  several  hundred  per  cent, 
profit.  So  thoroughly  have  these  touts  combed  the  country  that  the 
individual  can  nowhere  buy  of  the  makers;  their  work  has  all  been 
contracted  far  in  advance. 


CHAPTER  XII 

WANDERING   ABOUT   BORINQUEN 

THE  American  who,  noting  the  Stars  and  Stripes  flying  every- 
where and  post-offices  selling  the  old  familiar  postage-stamps, 
fancies  he  is  back  in  his  native  land  again  is  due  for  a  shock. 
Though  it  has  been  Americanized  industrially,  Porto  Rico  has  changed 
but  little  in  its  every-day  life.  Step  out  of  one  of  the  three  principal 
hotels  of  the  capital  and  you  are  in  a  foreign  land.  Spanish  is  as  neces- 
sary to  the  traveler  in  Porto  Rico  who  intends  to  get  out  of  the 
Condado-Vanderbilt-automobile  belt  as  it  is  in  Cuba,  Mexico,  or  South 
America.  Though  it  is  not  quite  true  that  "  base-ball  and  poker  are 
the  only  signs  of  American  influence,"  the  other  evidences  might  be 
counted  on  the  fingers.  There  is  the  use  of  personal  checks  in  place 
of  actual  money,  for  instance;  venders  of  chickens  carry  them  in 
baskets  instead  of  by  the  legs.  Offenders  are  tried  by  a  jury  of  their 
peers;  the  native  regiment  wears  the  uniform  of  our  regular  army; 
it  would  take  deep  reflection  to  'think  of  many  more  instances.  Only 
one  daily  newspaper  in  Porto  Rico  has  an  English  edition.  The  first 
American  theatrical  company  to  visit  the  island  since  the  United  States 
took  it  over  was  due  the  week  we  left.  There  are  barely  ten  thou- 
sand American  residents ;  except  in  the  capital  and  the  heart  of  two  or 
three  other  cities  one  attracts  as  much  gaping  attention  as  in  the  wilds 
of  Bolivia.  In  a  way  this  conservatism  is  one  of  the  charms  of  the 
island.  The  mere  traveler  is  agreeably  disappointed  to  find  that  it  has 
not  been  "  Americanized "  in  the  unpleasant  sense  of  the  word,  that 
it  has  kept  much  of  its  picturesque,  old-world  atmosphere. 

English  is  little  spoken  in  Porto  Rico.  That  is  another  of  the  sur- 
prises it  has  in  store  for  us,  at  least  for  those  of  us  old  enough  to  re- 
member what  a  splurge  we  made  of  swamping  the  island  with  Ameri- 
can teachers  soon  after  we  took  it  over.  It  is  indeed  the  "  official " 
language,  but  the  officials  who  speak  it  are  rare,  unless  they  come  from 
the  United  States,  in  which  case  they  are  almost  certain  to  be  equally 
ignorant  of  Spanish.  The  governor  never  stirs  abroad  without  an 
interpreter.  The  chief  of  police  rarely  ventures  a  few  words  of 

280 


WANDERING  ABOUT  BORINQUEN  281 

Castilian,  though  there  is  scarcely  a  patrolman  even  in  the  heart  of 
San  Juan  who  can  answer  the  simplest  question  in  English.  Can  any 
one  think  up  a  valid  reason  why  a  fair  command  of  the  official  tongue 
should  not  be  required  of  natives  seeking  government  employment? 
Spanish  is  a  delightful  language;  its  own  children  are  no  more  fond 
of  it  than  I  am.  But  after  all,  Porto  Rico  differs  from  the  rest  of 
Spanish-America,  in  that  it  is  a  part  of  the  United  States.  She  aspires 
some  day  to  statehood.  That  day  should  not  come  until  she  knows 
English ;  it  is  not  a  question  of  one  language  in  place  of  another,  but 
of  mutual  understanding. 

To  be  sure,  English  is  compulsory  in  all  the  schools  of  the  island, 
but  few  pupils  learn  it  thoroughly  enough  to  retain  it  through  life. 
Most  of  them  can  read  it  in  a  parrot-like  manner;  if  they  speak  it  at 
all,  it  is  to  shout  some  half-intelligible  phrase  after  a  passing  American. 
"  Aw  right "  is  about  the  only  expression  that  has  been  thoroughly 
Portoricanized.  That  is  not  exactly  the  fault  of  the  pupils.  The  ear 
shudders  at  the  "  English  "  spoken  even  by  those  teachers  who  are  sup- 
posed to  be  specialists  in  it ;  the  rest  are  little  short  of  incomprehensible. 
Passed  on  from  one  such  instructor  to  another,  the  English  that  finally 
comes  down  to  the  pupils  resembles  the  original  about  as  much  as  an 
oft-repeated  bit  of  gossip  resembles  the  original  facts.  It  might  almost 
be  said  that  there  has  been  no  progress  made  in  teaching  Porto  Rico 
English  in  the  twenty  years  of  American  rule,  or  at  least  in  the  last 
fifteen  of  them. 

On  the  whole  the  state  of  education  in  Porto  Rico  is  a  disappointment. 
It  is  a  surprise  to  the  visitor  who  has  thought  this  essential  matter 
was  settled  long  ago  to  find  sixty  per  cent,  of  the  population  illiterate, 
few  countrymen  over  thirty  who  can  read,  and  scarcely  a  third  of  the 
children  of  school  age  in  school.  We  had,  of  course,  much  to  make  up. 
In  1898,  after  four  centuries  of  ostensibly  civilized  government,  there 
was  but  one  building  on  the  island  specially  erected  for  educational 
purposes.  The  total  enrollment  in  the  schools,  with  a  population  of 
nearly  a  million,  was  26,000.  Three-fourths  of  the  males  of  voting 
age  were  wholly  illiterate.  Pupils  were  "  farmed  out,"  teachers  drew 
salaries  without  ever  going  near  a  schoolhouse,  all  the  old  Spanish 
tricks  were  in  full  swing.  But  that  was  twenty  years  ago.  Yet  the 
department  of  education  asks  for  twenty  years  more  to  bring  things 
up  to  a  "  reasonable  standard."  Why  ?  Moreover,  at  the  rate  things 
have  been  moving  it  will  not  nearly  do  that.  The  thousand  and  more 
school-buildings  that  have  been  erected,  tropical  Spanish  in  architecture, 


282  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

well  lighted  and  ventilated,  of  concrete  in  the  towns  and  wood  in  the 
country,  their  names  in  English  over  the  entrances,  are  all  very  well, 
but  they  are  far  from  sufficient.  The  census  taken  just  before  our 
arrival  showed  almost  a  half  million  children  of  school  age,  with  181,716 
enrolled,  and  146,561  in  average  attendance.  Of  the  2984  teachers 
only  148  were  Americans.  The  only  inducement  Porto  Rico  offers 
to  instructors  from  "  the  States  "  is  an  appeal  to  the  love  of  adventure. 
Those  who  wish  to  make  a  trip  to  the  tropics  may  be  sure  of  a  position 
—  at  a  lower  salary  than  they  receive  at  home,  and  with  the  privilege 
of  paying  their  own  passages  down  and  back  to  profiteering  steamship 
companies.  No  wonder  the  "  English  "of  Porto  Rico  is  going  to 
seed. 

In  the  graded  school  system  of  the  towns  all  instruction  is  given 
in  that  maltreated  tongue  except  the  class  in  Spanish.  In  the  rural 
schools  all  the  work  is  given  in  Spanish  except  a  class  in  so-called 
English  as  a  special  subject  in  all  grades  above  the  first.  The  Uni- 
versity of  Porto  Rico,  seventeen  years  old,  has  fewer  than  a  thousand 
students.  The  Agricultural  College  in  Mayagiiez  has  some  two  hun- 
dred. Private  institutions  like  the  Polytechnic  Institute  of  San  German 
are  doing  yoeman  service,  but  why  should  the  education  of  Porto 
Rico  depend  on  private  enterprise  ?  The  natives  claim  that  the  trouble 
is  that  nearly  all  the  commissioners  of  education  sent  down  from  the 
United  States  have  been  political  appointees;  the  latter  lay  the  blame 
to  the  fact  that  salaries  and  disbursements  are  set  by  the  native  legis- 
lature. Somewhere  between  the  two  the  education  of  Porto  Rico  is 
suffering. 

For  all  their  misfortunes,  or  perhaps  because  of  them,  the  Porto 
Ricans,  especially  outside  the  large  cities,  are  hospitable  and  soft-man- 
nered, characterized  by  a  constant  courtesy  and  a  solicitude  to  please 
those  with  whom  they  come  in  contact,  with  little  of  that  bruskness  of 
intercourse  for  which  "the  Mainland  "  is  notorious.  The  island  has 
a  less  grasping,  less  materialistic  atmosphere  than  Cuba,  it  is  less  sinis< 
ter,  less  cynical,  more  naive,  its  people  are  more  primitive  and  simple^ 
though  industrial  oppression  and  American  influence  are  slowly  chang- 
ing them  in  this  regard.  Their  naivete  is  often  delightful.  It  is  re- 
ported that  a  company  of  youthful  jibaros  drafted  into  the  Federal 
service  during  the  war  waited  on  their  captain  one  day  and  asked  foi- 
their  "  time,"  as  they  did  not  care  for  a  job  in  which  they  had  to  wear 
shoes!  The  children  are  rarely  boisterous,  rather  well-bred,  even 
where  little  chance  for  breeding  exists.  As  a  race  they  have  kept 


WANDERING  ABOUT  BORINQUEN  283 

many  of  the  peculiarities  of  their  Spanish  ancestry.  They  are  still 
Latin  Americans  in  their  over-developed  personal  pride  and  their  lack 
of  a  sense  of  humor.  Moorish  seclusion  of  women  still  raises  its  head 
among  the  "  best  families."  The  horror  in  the  slightest  suggestion  of 
manual  labor,  of  a  lowering  of  caste,  still  oppresses  the  "  upper  "  class. 
Few  of  them  would  dream  of  carrying  their  own  suitcase  or  a  package 
from  a  store,  even  though  they  must  abandon  them  for  lack  of  a  peon. 
Though  they  are  far  more  polite  than  our  own  club-swingers  in  super- 
ficial matters,  it  has  required  persistent  training  to  get  the  insular  police 
to  forget  their  high  standing  and  help  across  the  street  women  or 
children  of  the  socially  inferior  class.  Finally,  Porto  Ricans  are  little 
to  be  depended  upon  in  the  matter  of  time ;  manana  is  still  their  watch- 
word despite  twenty  years  of  Anglo-Saxon  bustle.  But,  for  that 
matter,  Americans  get  hopelessly  irresponsible  on  this  same  subject 
after  a  few  years  in  the  tropics. 

The  unprepared  visitor  will  find  Porto  Ricans  astonishingly  white, 
especially  in  the  interior.  There  are  few  full  negroes  on  the  island; 
sixty  per  cent,  of  the  population  have  straight  hair.  Yet  there  is  a 
motley  mixture  of  races,  without  rhyme  or  reason  from  our  point  of 
view.  Mulatto  estate  owners  may  have  pure  white  peons  working  for 
them ;  a  native  octoroon  is  frequently  seen  ordering  about  a  Gallego  serv- 
ant from  Spain.  There  is  still  considerable  evidence  of  Indian  blood  in 
the  Porto  Rican  physiognomy,  for  the  aborigines,  taking  refuge  in  the 
high  mountains,  were  wiped  out  only  by  assimilation.  Then  there  are 
Japanese  or  Chinese  features  peering  forth  from  many  a  hybrid  face. 
The  Spaniards  brought  in  coolies  to  work  on  the  military  roads,  and 
they  mixed  freely  with  all  the  lower  ranks  of  the  population.  Yet 
pure-blooded  Orientals  are  conspicuous  by  their  absence;  so  over- 
crowded a  community  does  not  appeal  even  to  the  ubiquitous  Chinese 
laundryman.  For  the  same  reason  Jews,  Syrians,  and  Armenians  have 
not  invaded  the  island  in  any  great  numbers,  though  one  now  and  then 
meets  an  olive-skinned  peddler  tramping  from  village  to  town  with  a 
great  flat  basket  filled  with  bolts  of  calico  and  the  like  on  his  cylindrical 
head. 

Small  commerce  is  almost  entirely  in  the  hands  of  Spaniards,  thanks 
to  whom  the  mixture  of  races  that  made  Latin-America  a  hybrid  is 
still  going  on  —  to  say  nothing  of  an  exploiting  of  the  simple  jibaros 
that  would  have  been  scorned  by  the  old  straight-forward,  sword- 
brandishing  conquistadores.  The  modern  Spaniard,  especially  the 


284          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

Canary  Islanders,  come  over  as  clerks,  live  like  dogs  until  they  have 
acquired  an  interest  in  their  master's  business,  and  eventually  set  up 
a  little  store  for  themselves.  Sharp,  thrifty,  heartless,  utterly  devoid 
of  any  ideal  than  the  amassing  of  a  fortune,  they  resort  to  every  species 
of  trickery  to  increase  their-  already  exorbitant  profits.  The  favorite 
scheme  is  to  get  the  naive  countrymen  into  a  gambling  game,  manigua, 
the  native  card-game,  for  instance,  and  to  urge  them  on  after  their 
scanty  funds  are  exhausted  with  a  sweet-voiced  "  Don't  let  that  worry 
you,  Chico,  I  '11  lend  you  all  you  want.  Go  ahead  and  play,"  until  they 
have  a  mortgage  on  "  Chico's  "  little  farm  or  have  forced  hint  to  sign 
a  contract  to  sell  them  all  his  coffee  at  half  the  market  price.  Then 
when  his  fortune  is  made,  the  wily  Iberian  leaves  each  of  his  concubines 
and  her  half-breed  flock  of  children  a  little  hut,  goes  back  to  Spain, 
marries,  and  bequeaths  his  wealth  to  his  legitimate  offspring.  Many  a 
little  plantation  is  still  encumbered  with  these  "  manigua  mortgages." 

To  the  casual  observer  there  seems  to  be  no  color-line  in  Porto  Rico ; 
but  in  home  life  and  social  matters  there  is  comparatively  little  mingling 
of  whites  and  blacks  above  the  peon  class.  In  the  Agricultural  College 
at  Mayaguez,  for  instance,  this  question  is  left  entirely  to  the  pupils. 
The  students  draw  their  own  color-line.  Clubs  are  formed  that  take 
in  only  white  members,  though  a  few  of  these  might  not  pass  muster 
among  Americans.  The  colored  boys  do  not  form  clubs  because  they 
cannot  afford  to  do  so.  In  the  early  days  the  teachers  gave  a  dance 
to  which  all  students  were  invited  without  distinction.  But  the  darker 
youths  brought  up  all  sorts  of  female  companions  from  the  play  a 
hovels,  and  the  experiment  was  never  repeated.  Yet  it  is  no  unusual 
sight  to  see  a  white  and  a  mulatto  youth  sharing  a  textbook  in  the  shade 
of  a  campus  mango-tree. 

There  remain  few  strictly  insular  customs  to  distinguish  Porto  Rico 
from  the  rest  of  Latin-America.  The  native  musical  instrument  is  a 
calabash,  or  gourd,  with  a  roughened  surface  over  which  a  steel  wire  is 
rubbed,  producing  a  half-mournful,  rasping  sound  almost  without 
cadence.  Thanks  perhaps  to  American  influence,  the  church  bells  are 
musical  and  are  rung  only  by  day,  in  grateful  contrast  to  the  incessant, 
broken-boiler  din  of  other  Spanish-settled  countries.  The  Rosario,  a 
kind  of  native  wake,  consists  of  all-night  singing  by  the  friends  and 
relatives  of  the  recent  dead.  Possibly  the  most  universal  local  custom 
is  that  of  using  barbed-wire  fences  as  clothes-lines,  to  the  misfortune 
even  of  the  linen  of  trustful  visitors.  The  panacea  for  all  rural  ills 
seems  to  be  the  tying  of  a  white  cloth  about  the  head.  Doctors  seldom 


WANDERING  ABOUT  BORINQUEN  285 

go  into  the  country,  but  let  the  sick  be  brought  in  to  them,  whatever 
the  stage  of  their  illness.  More  than  ten  thousand,  chiefly  of  the  hut- 
dwelling  class,  died  of  "flu"  during  the  winter  of  1918-19,  largely 
because  of  this  inertia  of  physicians. 

One  must  not  lose  sight  of  their  history  in  judging  the  present  con- 
dition of  the  Porto  Rican  masses.  It  is  only  fifty  years  since  slaves 
over  sixty  and  under  three  were  liberated,  and  later  still  that  slavery 
was  entirely  abolished.  No  wonder  the  owners  were  glad  to  be  rid 
of  what  fast  breeding  had  made  a  burden,  especially  with  free  labor 
at  twenty  cents  a  day.  Yet  they  were  indemnified  with  eight  million 
dollars  from  the  insular  revenues.  Nor  was  servitude  confined  to 
Africans.  Spain  long  used  Porto  Rico  as  a  penal  colony,  and  when 
public  works  no  longer  required  them,  the  convicts  were  turned  loose  to 
shift  for  themselves.  Most  of  them  took  to  the  mountains  where 
the  "  poor  white  "  population  is  numerous  to  this  day.  Yet  the  later 
generations  are  no  more  criminal  than  the  Australians;  if  there  is 
much  petty  thieving,  it  is  natural  in  a  hungry,  overcrowded  community. 

The  insular  police  established  by  the  Americans  have  an  efficiency 
rare  in  tropical  countries.  Their  detective  force  rounds  up  a  larger 
percentage  of  law-breakers  than  almost  any  other  such  body  in  the 
world.  The  insular  character  of  their  beat  is  to  their  advantage,  of 
course;  few  Porto  Ricans  can  swim.  The  island  has  long  since  been 
"  cleaned  up,"  and  the  unarmed  stranger  is  safer  in  its  remotest  corners 
than  on  Broadway.  In  olden  days  the  Porto  Rican  was  as  fond  of 
making  himself  a  walking  arsenal  as  the  Dominican;  ten  thousand 
revolvers  were  seized  in  nine  years,  and  miscellaneous  weapons  too 
numerous  to  coilht  have  been  confiscated  and  destroyed.  To-day, 
except  in  the  rare  cases  when  a  desperado  like  "  Chuchu  "  breaks  loose, 
or  strikers  grow  troublesome,  the  spotlessly  uniformed  insular  force 
has  little  to  do  but  to  enforce  the  unpopular  laws  that  have  come  with 
American  rule. 

Porto  Rico  voted  herself  dry  in  1917.  Three  varying  reasons  are 
given  for  this  unnatural  action,  according  to  the  point  of  view  of  the 
speaker.  Missionaries  assert,  that,  thanks  largely  to  their  work  with 
the  populace,  the  hungry  rank  and  file  determined  that  their  children 
should  not  grow  up  under  the  alcoholic  burden  that  had  blasted  their 
own  success  in  life.  Scoffers  claim  the  people  were  misled  by  psycho- 
logical suggestion.  The  majority  make  the  more  likely  assertion  that 
the  result  was  largely  due  to  a  mistake  on  the  part  of  the  ignorant 
peons.  The  "  dries  "  chose  as  their  party  emblem  the  green  cocoanut, 


286          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

a  favorite  rural  beverage.  Their  opponents  decorated  the  head  of  their 
ballot  with  a  bottle.  Now,  the  bottle  suggests  to  the  jibaros  of  the  hills 
the  Spaniards  who  keep  the  liquor  shops,  and  they  hate  the  Spaniards 
as  fiercely  as  they  are  capable  of  hating  anything.  Whatever  the 
workings  of  their  obscure  minds,  the  unshaven  countrymen  came  down 
out  of  the  mountains  to  the  polls,  and  next  morning  Porto  Rico  woke  up 
to  find  herself,  to  her  unbounded  surprise,  "  bone-dry."  The  mere  fact 
that  the  politicians  and  the  '*  influential  citizens  "  almost  in  a  body, 
and  even  the  American  governor,  who  saw  insular  revenues  cut  down 
when  they  sadly  needed  building  up,  were  against  the  change  had  noth- 
ing to  do  with  the  case.  Since  then  the  insular  police  have  confiscated 
hundreds  of  home-made  stills  and  thousands  of  gallons  of  illicit  liquor. 
It  is  rumored  that  they  would  like  to  indict  the  Standard  Oil  Company 
as  an  accessory  before  the  fact,  for  virtually  all  the  stills  that  languish 
in  the  police  museum  in  San  Juan  are  made  of  the  world-wide  five-gallon 
oil  can,  some  of  them  ingenious  in  the  extreme. 

Cock-fighting  was  forbidden  by  American  edict  soon  after  we  took 
over  the  island  —  and  in  retaliation  the  Porto  Rican  Legislature  forbade 
prize-fighting,  even  "practice  bouts."  But  there  is  no  law  against 
keeping  fighting-cocks,  and  where  there  are  game-cocks  there  is  bound 
to  be  fighting,  at  least  in  Latin-America.  The  police  are  on  the  con- 
stant look-out  for  clandestine  rinas  de  gallos.  One  point  in  favor  of 
the  sleuths  is  that,  though  they  cannot  arrest  people  for  harboring  prize 
roosters,  they  can  bring  them  up  on  the  charge  of  cruelty  to  animals 
if  they  pick  and  trim  the  birds  as  proper  preparation  for  battle  re- 
quires. Americans  who  have  lived  long  in  Porto  Rico  assert  that 
cock-fighting  and  the  lottery  are  so  indigenous  to  the  island  that  there 
is  little  hope  of  really  stamping  them  out.  Indeed,  even  the  police  are 
in  sympathy  with  the  sport,  though  they  may  not  let  that  sympathy  in- 
terfere with  doing  their  duty.  High  American  officials  sometimes  ask 
what  there  is  wrong  in  running  a  lottery,  so  long  as  other  forms  of 
gambling  are  permitted,  especially  as  the  old  government  lottery  kept 
up  many  benevolences.  Why,  they  ask,  should  not  the  poor  man  be 
allowed  to  "  take  a  chance  "  as  well  as  speculators  on  the  stock  ex- 
change? Roosters  and  billetcs  are  two  things  that  are  sure  to  come 
back  if  Porto  Rico  wins  her  autonomy  during  the  life  of  the  present 
inhabitants.  Possibly  the  next  generation  will  be  like-minded ;  one  of 
the  absorbing  tasks  of  the  insular  police  is  to  keep  street  urchins  from 
gambling  on  the  numbers  of  passing  automobiles. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  Porto  Rico  has  more  than  her  share  of 


WANDERING  ABOUT  BORINQUEN  287 

juvenile  offenders.  Sexual  morality  is  on  a  low  plane  in  the  island. 
Though  there  is  less  public  vice  than  with  us,  the  custom  of  even  the 
"  best  citizens  "  to  establish  "  outside  families  "  is  wide-spread.  Even 
the  "  Washington  of  Porto  Rico,"  who  is  pointed  out  as  the  model 
man  of  the  island,  always  kept  two  or  three  queridas,  and  lost  none  of 
his  high  standing  with  the  natives  for  that  reason.  Estate  owners  are 
well-nigh  as  free  with  the  pretty  wives  of  their  peons  as  were  old 
feudal  lords.  Women  of  this  class  are  often  more  proud  to  have  a  son 
by  the  "  sefior  "  than  by  their  own  husbands.  The  latter  are  easy- 
going to  a  degree  unknown  among  us;  they  may  be  cajoled  by  presents 
or  threatened  with  discharge  —  and  where  else  shall  they  find  a  spot 
to  live  on  ?  —  or  at  worst  they  can  seek  consolation  in  the  arms  of  their 
own  queridas.  The  men  usually  acknowledge  their  illegal  children 
without  hypocrisy,  but  they  frequently  abandon  them  to  their  own 
devices.  Homeless  children  are  one  of  the  problems  of  all  Porto 
Rican  cities ;  in  San  German  a  gang  of  little  ruffians  roost  in  trees  by 
night.  The  cook  of  an  American  missionary  family  openly  gave  all 
her  wages,  except  what  went  for  the  rent  of  her  hovel,  to  her  "  man," 
who  was  married  to  another.  It  was  not  that  he  demanded  it ;  there 
is  little  of  the  "  white  slave  "  attitude  in  Porto  Rico,  but  she  was  proud 
to  do  so  and  it  is  costumbre  del  pais.  Much  as  they  deplored  such  an 
employee,  the  missionaries  endured  her,  knowing  only  too  well  by 
experience  that  they  might  look  farther  and  fare  worse.  Few  Porto 
Ricans  of  the  better  class  permit  their  women  to  go  to  confession,  how- 
ever strictly  they  keep  up  the  other  forms  of  religion.  Out  of  church 
the  priests  are  frankly  men  like  other  men,  and  seldom  have  any 
hesitancy  in  admitting  it.  One  famous  for  his  pulpit  eloquence  brazenly 
boasts  himself  "  the  most  successful  lover  in  Porto  Rico." 

It  is  natural  that  Ihere  should  be  a  certain  political  unrest  in  Porto 
Rico.  The  island  does  not  know,  for  instance  —  nor  does  any  one  else, 
apparently  —  whether  it  is  a  colony  or  a  possession  of  the  United 
States,  or  whether  it  is  an  integral  part  of  it.  A  bit  of  history  is 
required  to  explain  the  situation.  The  island  was  under  the  jurisdiction, 
of  Santo  Domingo  from  its  settling  to  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
when  a  royal  decree  made  it  an  independent  colony.  For  a  long  time 
it  was  not  self-supporting  —  thanks,  no  doubt,  largely  to  the  dishonesty 
of  its  governors.  Its  government  became  such  a  burden  that  Spain 
assigned  a  certain  proportion  of  the  treasure  it  was  drawing  from 
Mexico  to  support  it.  Incidentally  this  came  near  making  Porto  Rico 


288          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

British,  for  ships  bringing  funds  from  Mexico  were  repeatedly  made 
the  objects  of  attack,  and  the  commander  of  one  of  these  fleets  once 
attempted  to  occupy  the  island,  but  disease  among  his  soldiers  forced 
him  to  abandon  the  enterprise,  taking  with  him  only  such  trophies  as 
he  could  tear  from  churches  and  fortresses.  When,  a  hundred  years 
ago,  the  wave  of  rebellion  swept  over  all  the  Spanish  colonies,  Santo 
Domingo  declared  her  independence  and  offered  to  cooperate  with 
Porto  Rico  in  winning  hers  also;  but  a  majority  of  the  inhabitants 
remained  loyal  to  the  crown.  In  1887  a  popular  assembly  in  Ponce, 
while  acknowledging  allegiance  to  Spain,  demanded  a  certain  measure 
of  autonomy.  There  was  danger  that  the  Cuban  insurgents  would 
send  an  expedition  to  Porto  Rico  to  join  the  malcontents  there.  Hence 
on  November  28,  1897,  Spain  granted  Porto  Rico  local  government 
in  so  far  as  internal  affairs,  budgets,  customs,  and  treaties  of  commerce 
were  concerned.  She  was  to  have  an  elective  legislature,  an  upper 
house  appointed  by  the  governor,  and  a  cabinet  composed  of  residents 
of  the  island.  The  following  February  such  a  cabinet  was  appointed, 
and  on  March  27  —  note  the  date  —  elections  were  held.  In  other 
words  Porto  Rico  had  won  autonomy  without  recourse  to  bloodshed, 
and  was  on  the  eve  of  exercising  it  when  the  Maine  was  blown  up. 
Moreover,  she  had  never  in  her  history  asked  to  be  separated  from 
Spain. 

When  the  Americans  came,  a  postal  system  was  organized,  the 
government  lottery  was  suppressed,  freedom  of  speech  and  of  the  press 
was  restored,  a  police  force  of  natives  under  American  officials  was 
established,  strict  sanitary  measures  were  adopted,  free  schools  were 
opened,  provision  was  made  for  the  writ  of  habeas  corpus  and  jury 
trials,  the  courts  were  reorganized,  imprisonment  for  political  offenses, 
chains  and  solitary  confinement  were  abolished,  the  foreclosure  of  mort- 
gages was  temporarily  suspended,  Spanish  currency  was  replaced 
by  American,  local  officials  were  elected,  and  a  civil  government  was 
established  on  May  I,  1900.  Note,  however,  that  with  all  this  Porto 
Rico  did  not  get  as  much  autonomy  as  it  had  already  won  from  Spain. 
Gradually  the  island  has  almost  reached  the  point  politically  where  the 
Spanish-American  War  found  it,  but  meanwhile  there  had  been  much 
discontent.  Then  along  came  the  "  Jones  bill."  This  provides  for 
an  elective  legislature,  extends  the  appointive  judiciary  system,  admits 
a  delegate  to  our  Congress,  and  grants  American  citizenship  to  Porto 
Ricans.  But  the  acts  of  the  insular  legislature  must  be  approved  by 
the  American  governor,  and  six  of  the  heads  of  departments  that  make 


WANDERING  ABOUT  BORINQUEN  289 

up  the  Executive  Council  are  Americans.  The  Porto  Ricans  chafe  at 
citizenship  without  statehood.  The  island  complains  that  it  is  an 
organized  but  not  an  incorporated  territory  of  the  United  States. 
Though  it  enjoys  many  of  the  rights  of  territories,  and  a  larger  ex- 
emption from  federal  taxation  than  ever  did  any  other  American  terri- 
tory, it  is  not  politically  happy. 

There  are  four  political  parties  in  Porto  Rico.  The  Republicans, 
who  have  little  in  common  with  our  "  G.  O.  P.,"  though  they  send  dele- 
gates to  its  conventions,  want  immediate  statehood.  The  Unionists, 
contrary  to  their  title,  demand  independence.  There  is  a  strong  social- 
ist and  labor  party,  and  a  minor  group  that  desires  a  return  to  Spanish 
rule.  These  divisions  are  not  so  definite  as  they  seem,  if  we  may 
believe  an  unusually  informative  native  postmaster  of  the  interior. 

"  The  people  with  small  government  jobs,"  he  asserted,  "  many 
school  teachers  among  them,  secretly  long  for  independence,  chiefly  in 
the  hope  of  getting  more  graft.  The  Spaniards  still  mix  secretly  in 
politics  and  are  really  indepcndentistas,  though  pretending  to  want  state- 
hood. Porto  Rico  would  be  wholly  Americanized  now  if  the  gover- 
nors had  not  ignorantly  put  in  anti-American  politicos.  There  has 
really  been  only  one  competent  governor  since  the  Americans  took  Porto 
Rico.  We  are  decidedly  not  yet  ready  for  jury  trial;  there  was  one 
of  the  most  serious  mistakes.  It  was  also  a  mistake  to  make  us  Ameri- 
can citizens  collectively.  We  should  have  been  given  individual  choice 
in  the  matter.  Now  if  you  accuse  a  man  of  not  acting  like  an  Ameri- 
can citizen  he  cries,  '  Pah !  They  made  me  an  American  citizen.  / 
had  nothing  to  say  about  it.'  The  best  people  think  we  need  twenty 
years  of  military  rule  before  we  are  given  even  local  liberty.  A  plebi- 
scite would  give  a  false  opinion  because  the  politicians  and  the  small-  \ 
estate  owners,  who  are  chiefly  Spanish,  would  send  their  peons  down 
to  vote  for  independence  without  any  notion  of  what  it  means.  And 
the  best  class  would  n't  vote.  Do  you  think  I  would  have  my  photo- 
graph and  thumb-print  taken,  like  a  common  criminal,  in  order  to  cast 
my  ballot?  The  people  do  not  know  how  to  be  free,  after  centuries 
of  Spanish  slavery.  If  independence  were  signed  at  eight  o'clock  to- 
morrow morning,  I  should  leave  Porto  Rico  at  nine ! "  he  concluded, 
vehemently. 

There  is,  of  course,  no  more  reason  why  Porto  Rico  should  have 
her  independence  than  that  Florida  should.  That  she  is  entitled  to  be 
made  a  fully  incorporated  territory  now,  and  a  state  in  due  season, 
seems  the  fitting  course.  But  she  is  decidedly  not  yet  ready  for  state- 


290          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

hood.  For  one  thing  she  must  first  know  English.  The  partial 
autonomy  she  already  enjoys  shows  her  far  from  prepared  for  self- 
rule.  Uncle  Sam  is  always  in  too  big  a  hurry  to  give  his  wards  local 
government ;  also  we  listen  perhaps  too  much  to  Latin-American  criti- 
cism. We  are  not  used  to  the  sob-eloquence  of  the  race,  which  at 
bottom  means  very  little.  The  legislature  and  native  insular  officials 
are  by  no  means  free  from  intrigue,  graft,  and  dishonesty.  Towns 
with  $100,000  incomes  spend  half  of  it  in  salaries  to  the  mayor  and 
his  colleagues.  Teachers  were  forced  to  pay  ten  per  cent,  of  their 
wages  into  political  funds,  and  the  native  court  found  that  "  they  can 
do  what  they  wish  with  their  salaries."  The  great  socialist  senator 
himself,  rumor  has  it,  bought  land  in  Santurce  at  a  dollar  an  acre,  had 
public  streets  put  in,  and  sold  out  at  three  dollars,  though  that,  to  be 
sure,  might  have  happened  in  Trenton  or  Omaha.  Even  the  post- 
offices  are  said  to  be  corrupt  with  local  politics. 

So  long  as  there  is  a  great  apathetic,  illiterate,  emotional  mass  of 
voters  self-government  can  be  no  more  than  a  farce,  in  Porto  Rico 
or  elsewhere.  No  Anglo-Saxon  party  leader  can  hope  to  keep  pace 
with  the  suave  machinations  of  Spanish-American  politicians.  They 
can  think  of  more  tricks  overnight  than  he  can  run  to  earth  in  a  week. 
Some  years  ago  a  youthful  American  was  approached  by  a  Porto 
Rican  political  leader  with  a  cequest  to  come  and  address  a  public 
meeting. 

"  But  I  don't  know  a  word  of  Spanish ! "  he  protested. 

"  All  the  better,"  replied  the  politician ;  "  we  want  you  to  speak  in 
English." 

"  I  never  made  a  speech  in  my  life,"  continued  the  American. 

"  Talk  about  anything  whatever,"  pleaded  the  other,  "  the  weather, 
the  scenery,  baseball." 

The  youth,  who  was  not  averse  to  a  "  lark,"  mounted  the  platform 
and  began  to  expound  in  choppy  words  the  glories  of  baseball.  At 
the  end  of  each  sentence  the  politician  silenced  him  with  a  gesture  and 
"  interpreted  "  his  statements  to  the  crowded  peons,  who,  to  the  speak- 
er's astonishment,  greeted  each  well-rounded  Spanish  phrase  with  howls 
of  delight.  Not  until  the  meeting  was  over  and  one  of  his  hearers  had 
addressed  him  by  a  name  that  was  not  his  own,  did  the  youth  awaken 
to  the  fact  that  he  had  been  introduced  as  the  son  of  the  governor,  and 
that  the  Spanish  portion  of  his  speech  had  been  an  explanation  of  how 
anxious  his  "  father  "  was  to  have  the  "  interpreter  "  elected  to  the 


WANDERING  ABOUT  BORINQUEN  291 

office  he  sought.     "Dice  el  americano   (the  American  says)"  is  still 
one  of  the  by-words  of  Porto  Rican  politics. 

But  after  all  one  does  not  visit  so  beautiful  and  fascinating  a  country 
as  Porto  Rico  to  chatter  of  its  problems,  but  to  meet  its  curious  people 
and  to  marvel  at  its  glorious  scenery.  More  mountainous  than  even 
Haiti  and  Santo  Domingo,  the  island  is  such  an  unbroken  labyrinth 
of  hills,  ranges,  and  high  peaks,  of  deep  valleys,  perpendicular  slopes, 
and  precipitous  canyons,  that  its  rugged  beauty  seems  never-ending. 
That  beauty,  too,  is  enhanced  by  the  great  amount  of  cultivation,  by 
the  character  it  gains  over  the  often  uninhabited  island  to  the  west- 
ward in  being  everywhere  peopled,  by  the  great  variety  of  colors  that 
decorate  it  especially  in  this  tropical  spring-time  of  February.  Even 
along  the  rolling  coastal  belt  the  highways  are  lined  with  the  green-  and 
red-leaved  almendras,  or  false  almond-trees,  which  here  and  there  carpet 
the  roads  with  Turkish  rugs  of  fallen  leaves.  Higher  up  comes  the 
roble,  or  flowering  laurel,  with  its  masses  of  delicate  pink  blossoms, 
then  the  bucare-trees,  used  as  coffee  shade,  daub  the  precipitous  hill- 
sides with  splotches  of  burnt-orange  hue;  still  farther  aloft  come 
beautiful  tree  ferns,  symbolical  of  high  tropical  altitudes,  and  every- 
where stand  the  majestic  royal  palms  and  the  dense,  massive  mango- 
trees,  in  sorrel-colored  blossom  at  this  season,  to  crown  the  heavy  green 
vegetation  that  everywhere  clothes  the  island.  For  although  almost 
every  acre  of  it  was  denuded  of  its  native  forest  growth  by  the  tree- 
hating  Spaniards,  nature  and  the  necessities  of  man  have  replaced  its 
unbroken  verdure. 

It  would  be  hard  to  say  which  of  the  several  splendid  roads  across 
the  island  offers  the  best  glimpse  of  this  scenic  fairyland.  Some  swear 
by  the  Ponce-Arecibo  route,  through  the  magnificent  Utuado  valley; 
others  find  nothing  to  compare  with  the  stretch  between  Comerio  and 
Cayey,  the  heart  of  the  tobacco  district ;  the  most  traveled  certainly  is 
the  great  military  highway  of  the  Spaniards,  from  San  Juan  to  Ponce, 
the  first  half  of  it  rivalled  now  by  an  American-built  branch  through 
Barranquitas.  Perhaps  the  most  beautiful  bit  of  all  is  the  journey 
from  Guayama  up  to  Cayey,  that,  too,  by  a  route  that  antedates  our 
possession.  One  unconsciously  compares  these  achievements  of  the  old 
Spanish  engineers  with  our  more  recent  efforts,  and  the  comparison  is 
not  always  favorable  to  the  Americans.  The  Spaniard  built  in  that 
leisurely  fashion  of  European  highways,  which  prefers  wide  detours 


292 

to  over-steep  grades  ;  his  successor  here  and  there  betrays  the  impatience 
of  his  race  by  a  too  abrupt  turn  or  a  sharper  slope.  Yet  the  works  of 
both  are  splendidly  engineered,  with  never  a  really  dangerous  spot  to  a 
sane  driver,  for  all  the  hairpin  curves,  the  precipitous  mountain  walls 
above  and  below,  the  lofty  bridges  over  profound  canyons  at  the  bot- 
tom of  which  insignificant  brooks  meander  or  roaring  torrents  tear 
seaward  as  if  fleeing  from  the  wrath  of  the  towering  peaks  above, 
according  to  the  season.  There  are  reminders  of  Europe  at  every 
turn,  —  crenelated  bridge-parapets,  kilometer-posts  and  white  frac- 
tions of  them  at  every  hundred  meters,  squatting  men  wielding  their 
hammers  on  roadside  stone-piles,  caminero  huts  every  few  miles.  It 
is  the  latter,  in  particular,  that  explain  the  unfailing  near-perfection  of 
Porto  Rican  highways.  Brick  or  stone  dwellings  for  the  capataces, 
or  road  foremen,  who  must  proceed  at  once  to  any  broken  roadbed, 
rain  or  shine,  are  interspersed  with  the  too  miserable  huts  of  the  peones 
camineros,  who  toil  unceasingly  day  after  day  in  the  up-keep  of  the 
highways,  like  scattered  railroad  section-gangs.  This  system,  a  direct 
legacy  from  Spain,  would  be  the  answer  to  our  own  road  troubles,  were 
it  possible  to  find  men  in  our  country  willing  to  spend  their  lives  at  low 
wages  in  such  an  occupation. 

Travel  is  unceasing  along  these  splendid  island  roads.  Automobiles, 
creaking  ox-carts  and  massive  tarpaulin-covered  freight  wagons  drawn 
by  several  teams  of  big  Missouri  mules,  mail-busses  and  crowded 
guaguas,  horse  carriages  and  now  and  then  a  string  of  pack-animals 
to  contrast  with  the  flying  motors,  make  endless  procession  along  the 
way,  while  countless  barefoot  pedestrians  flank  the  blurred  roadsides. 
Only  the  horsemen  so  frequent  elsewhere  in  Latin-America  are  con- 
spicuous by  their  scarcity.  In  contrast  to  carefully  tended  highways 
are  the  constant  successions  of  miserable  huts,  built  of  anything  that 
will  hold  together,  some  of  them  so  close  to  the  precipitous  edge  of 
the  road  that  the  front  yard  sometimes  comes  tumbling  down  into  it 
in  the  rainy  season.  Others  are  pitched  up  the  mountain  sides  to  the 
clouds  above,  many  of  the  slopes  so  sheer  that  the  little  garden  patches 
stand  almost  on  end.  A  case  once  actually  came  to  court  of  a  man 
who  sued  his  neighbor  for  pushing  his  cow  off  his  farm,  entailing  great 
labor  to  hoist  her  up  again.  Little  American-style  schoolhouses,  the 
Stars  and  Stripes  always  flying  above  them,  the  whole  interior  from 
teacher  to  pupils  visible  through  the  wide-open  doors,  flash  past. 
Lounging  men  are  frequent,  women  everywhere  making  lace  or  drawn- 
work  squat  like  toads  in  the  doorways  of  their  patched  hovels,  no  one 


WANDERING  ABOUT  BORINQUEN  293 

of  which  is  insignificant  or  inaccessible  enough  not  to  have  the  census- 
enumerator's  tag  tacked  in  plain  sight  on  its  bare  front  wall. 

From  Guayamja  almost  at  sea-level  the  old  Spanish  carretera  climbs 
quickly  into  the  cooler  air,  in  snaky  fashion,  the  town  and  the  cane- 
green  valley  below  diminishing  to  a  picture  framed  by  the  white 
beach-line  and  the  fuzzy  mountain-slopes,  then  mounts  by  tortuous 
curves  and  serpentine  loops  around  the  brinks  of  dizzy  precipices  to  a 
height  of  three  thousand  feet.  For  a  time  it  clings  along  the  cliff  of  a 
magnificent  little  valley,  giving  an  endless  succession  of  vistas,  pano- 
ramas of  mountains,  ravines,  and  forested  slopes,  enhanced  by  frequent 
glimpses  of  the  deep-blue  Caribbean.  No  one  of  these  highways  is 
twice  alike;  morning  or  evening,  under  the  blazing  tropical  sun  or 
veiled  with  mountain  showers,  there  is  always  a  different  aspect. 
Then  suddenly  it  bursts  out  high  above  the  valley  of  Cayey,  the  roof- 
flecked  red  of  the  town  surrounded  and  packed  as  far  as  the  eye  can 
see  with  cloth-covered  tobacco-fields,  the  crowning  beauty  of  Porto 
Rican  scenery.  As  we  drop  downward  by  more  hairpin  curves  and 
climb  again  into  the  hills  beyond,  the  steep  mountainsides  are  every- 
where covered  in  enormous  patches  with  what  look  like  the  snowfields 
and  glaciers  of  Switzerland,  transported  to  the  tropics.  All  through 
the  region  the  big  unpainted  wooden  barns  of  the  American  Tobacco 
Company  bulk  above  the  shade-grown  immensities,  as  if  half  buried 
by  drifted  snow,  until  the  entranced  beholder  finds  it  hard  to  remembei 
that  he  is  in  a  land  of  perpetual  summer,  despite  the  royal  palms  that 
here  and  there  spring  aloft  from  the  white  landscape.  Elsewhere  the 
unclothed  fields  are  planted  in  endless  rows  of  tobacco,  on,  up,  and 
over  hill  after  mountain,  some  of  them  so  steep  as  to  make  cultivation 
seem  impossible,  and  all  looking  as  if  their  velvety  green  fur  had 
been  put  in  order  by  a  gigantic  comb. 

Here  one  meets  wagon-loads  of  tobacco  plants  and  men  carrying 
them  in  baskets  on  their  heads,  tiny  plants  in  the  transplanting  season, 
great  clusters  of  the  full-grown  leaves  in  cutting-time.  He  is  a  simple 
fellow,  the  stubby-footed  toiler  of  these  regions,  so  naive  that  he  often 
tucks  away  for  years  the  checks  with  which  the  company  pays  for  his 
produce,  instead  of  cashing  them.  They  are  always  "good,"  he  argues, 
and  easily  concealed,  and  he  seems  never  to  have  heard  of  the  word 
interest. 

"  Where  does  all  this  stuff  go  ?  "  demanded  an  American  tourist  who 
had  been  motoring  for  hours  through  these  tropical  glaciers,  "  I  have 
never  seen  much  Porto  Rican  tobacco  in  the  States." 


294          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

"  Ah,  but  when  it  reaches  New  York  it  becomes  Habana,"  explained 
the  tobacco  agent.  "  You  see,  we  mix  it  with  the  Cuban." 

"  About  one  leaf  of  Habana  to  a  bale  of  this,"  suggested  the  tourist. 
"  Well,  something  like  that,"  admitted  the  tobacco-man. 

The  holy  place  of  Porto  Rico  —  for  it  would  be  a  strange  Latin- 
American  country  without  one  —  is  the  old  church  of  Hormigueros, 
a  yellow  church  high  on  a  hill,  conspicuous  afar  off  and  with  the  in- 
evitable cane  of  the  coast  lands  stretching  away  from  it  as  far  as  the 
pilgrim  can  see.  The  pious  still  climb  its  great  stone  stairway  on  their 
hands  and  knees,  though  rarely  now  except  during  the  big  fiesta  in 
September.  The  story  is  that,  some  time  back  in  the  days  of  legend, 
a  bull  attacked  a  man  in  the  field  below.  The  man  prayed  to  the  Virgin, 
promising  to  do  something  in  her  honor  if  she  would  save  him,  and 
at  the  very  instant  his  life  was  about  to  be  gored  out  the  bull  dropped 
dead  at  his  feet.  There  is  a  colored  picture  of  that  miracle  in  the 
church  on  the  hill,  which  was  built  by  the  grateful  man,  who  also  en- 
tailed the  estate  he  owned  below  to  support  it  in  perpetuity.  To-day 
the  lands  are  producing  sugar  cane  for  the  Guanica  Central,  which  pays 
rent  to  the  church  —  and  which  also  hastens  to  contribute  when  the 
parish  priest  suggests  that  money  is  needed  for  a  fiesta  or  for  some 
other  purpose.  For  if  the  company  does  not  respond,  the  priest  calls 
a  holiday,  digging  up  some  old  saint  out  of  the  church  calendar,  and 
the  fields  round  about  go  begging  for  laborers. 

There  is  at  least  one  other  "  sight "  which  the  visitor  to  Porto  Rico 
should  not  miss,  for  it  throws  a  striking  side-light  on  Latin-American 
character.  In  the  hilly  little  town  of  Barranquitas  is  the  birth-place 
of  Luis  Munoz  Rivera,  often  called  the  "  George  Washington  of  Porto 
Rico."  A  cheap,  thin,  little  clapboarded  building,  uninviting  by  our 
standards,  though  almost  palatial  to  the  simple  country  people,  it  has 
been  turned  into  a  museum  to  the  dead  insular  hero,  such  a  museum 
as  cannot  often  be  seen  elsewhere.  At  the  back  of  the  house  a  lean-to 
garage  has  been  built  to  accommodate  the  expensive  touring-car  in 
which  his  remains  were  carried  to  the  cemetery.  Not  that  Rivera 
owned  an  automobile;  he  was  too  honest  a  servant  of  his  country  to 
have  reached  that  degree  of  affluence.  It  was  loaned  for  the  funeral 
by  one  of  the  dead  man's  admirers,  a  senator  and  the  owner  of  a  large 
sugar  central.  When  the  mourners  returned,  it  was  decided  to  make  a 
Porto  Rican  "  Mount  Vernon  "  of  the  humble  residence  of  the  departed 
statesman,  to  which  end  the  rich  senator  not  only  contributed  generously 


WANDERING  ABOUT  BORINQUEN  295 

in  money,  but  added  the  improvised  funeral-car.  There  it  stands  to 
this  day,  its  brand  new  tires  lifted  off  the  garage  floor  by  wooden 
horses,  the  license  of  four  years  ago  still  on  its  blunt  nose,  the  plank 
framework  that  was  built  out  the  back  of  it  to  hold  the  coffin  still 
intact.  Inside  the  house  is  the  narrow  spring  cot  on  which  the  hero 
died,  covered  with  those  poetically  lettered  purple  ribbons  of  which  the 
Latin-American  mourner  is  so  fond,  and  a  score  of  other  belongings, 
similarly  decorated.  These  include  a  tin  bathtub  on  wheels,  a  leather 
valise,  the  high-hat  box  indispensable  to  diplomats,  several  photographs 
of  the  deceased,  death-masks  of  his  face  and  of  his  hands,  his  last 
umbrella  —  one  almost  expects  to  find  his  last  toothbrush,  with  a  purple 
bow  on  the  handle  —  all  of  them  more  or  less  covered  with  cobwebs. 
On  his  writing-table  lies  a  specially  bound  volume  of  his  book  of  poems, 
called  "  Tropicales,"  and,  most  striking  tribute  of  all,  an  elaborate  bit 
of  embroidery  done  in  the  various  shaded  hair  of  his  female  admirers. 

Rivera  differed  from  most  politicians  in  being  strictly  honest.  Not 
only  did  he  live  within  his  government  salary;  he  gave  a  large  share 
of  it  to  the  poor.  Bit  by  bit  hatchet-and-cherry-tree  stories  are  already 
growing  up  about  his  memory.  As  the  leader  of  the  Unionist  party 
he  was  violently  anti-American,  went  to  the  United  States  to  fight  for 
the  independence  of  the  island  —  and  came  back  ardently  pro-American. 
His  admirers  assert  that  "  he  would  have  been  the  salvation  of  Porto 
Rico  had  he  lived,"  though  exactly  what  they  mean  by  the  statement 
they  probably  have  little  notion  themselves. 

There  are  two  drawbacks  to  walking  in  Porto  Rico,  though  the  ardent 
pedestrian  will  not  let  them  deter  him  from  his  favorite  sport.  For 
one  thing  an  American  attracts  attention,  and  loses  the  incognito  that 
makes  walking  in  Europe,  for  instance,  so  pleasant.  Then  the  roads 
are  too  good.  The  hard  macadam  surfaces  which  are  the  joy  of  the 
motorist  are  not  soft  underfoot,  and  the  rushing  automobiles  have 
small  respect  for  the  mere  foot-traveler.  There  are,  of  course,  many 
unpaved  trails  in  and  over  the  mountains,  but  they  were  scarcely  pass- 
able at  the  time  of  our  visit,  for  Porto  Rico  seems  to  have  no  definitely 
fixed  wet  and  dry  season. 

I  rambled  about  several  sections  of  the  island  on  foot.  There  was 
the  trip  to  and  about  Lares,  for  instance,  in  the  heart  of  the  coffee 
district.  The  men  of  the  over-developed  big  toes  are  less  in  touch  with 
the  outside  world  than  either  the  cane  or  tobacco  planters.  The  coffee 
industry  is  the  only  one  that  suffered  by  the  island's  change  of  sov- 


296          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

ereignty.  Though  it  was  not  introduced  into  Porto  Rico  until  more 
than  two  centuries  after  the  sugar-cane,  the  Arabian  berry  was  the  king 
of  the  island  when  General  Miles  landed  the  first  American  troops  at 
Guanica.  The  loss  of  their  free  markets  in  Spain  and  Cuba,  however, 
caused  the  coffee  men  to  succumb  under  a  discouragement  from  which 
they  have  not  wholly  recovered  to  this  day.  It  is  this,  no  doubt,  which 
accounts  for  the  careless  methods  of  the  cafetales,  where  jungle,  weeds, 
and  parasites  often  choke  the  bushes,  while  the  berries  are  dried  on 
half-cured  cowhides  laid  in  the  open  streets  or  on  hut  floors,  with 
chickens,  dogs,  goats,  and  naked  children,  to  say  nothing  of  pigs, 
wandering  over  them  at  will.  Such  conditions  will  of  course  improve 
when  the  United  States,  th»  greatest  coffee-drinking  nation  on  the 
globe,  finally  learns  that  a  berry  equal  to  any  in  the  world  can  be 
produced  on  American  soil. 

In  Lares  region  the  crop  is  taken  a  bit  more  seriously.  There  are 
brick  coffee-floors  in  many  a  yard,  and  the  bushes  cover  even  the  crests 
of  the  mountains,  though  the  stranger  might  not  suspect  it,  hidden  as 
they  are  by  the  sheltering  trees.  They  are  pretty  in  their  white  blos- 
soms in  the  February  season,  and  the  bucare  trees  flame  forth  every- 
where on  the  steep  slopes.  The  Spaniards,  who  own  many  of  the 
estates,  pay  fifty  cents  "  flat "  a  day  to  their  peons.  The  more  gener- 
ous Porto  Rican  growers,  if  their  own  assertions  may  be  taken  at  par, 
pay  sixty  cents,  with  the  right  to  eat  the  oranges  and  guineas,  or  small 
bananas,  that  fall  from  the  trees,  the  rent-free  possession  of  an  acre 
of  ground  on  which  to  build  a  hut  and  graze  a  cow,  a  pig,  or  a  few 
chickens,  and  plant  a  garden,  and  such  free  firewood  as  may  be  picked 
up  on  the  estate.  Formerly  they  paid  thirty  cents  and  gave  two  meals 
a  day,  but  the  cost  of  food  has  caused  them  to  "  advance  "  wages  in- 
stead. The  women  and  girls  of  the  region  spend  most  of  their  time 
making  lace  or  drawn-work,  as  elsewhere,  unless  they  are  attracted  to 
the  cafetales  in  picking  season  by  the  higher  inducement  of  forty  cents 
a  day. 

I  paused  to  talk  with  a  youth  who  kept  a  roadside  "  shop."  It  con- 
sisted of  a  few  plantain  leaves  and  pieces  of  boxes  laid  together  into 
a  kind  of  shelter  and  counter.  He  rarely  made  a  half-dollar  daily 
profit,  he  admitted,  but  that  was  all  he  could  earn  in  the  coffee  fields, 
and  there  he  wore  out  his  shoes,  which  cost  much  money.  He  was  an 
ardent  friend  of  Americans,  like  many  of  the  country  people.  Asked 
to  explain  his  friendship,  he  based  it  chiefly  on  the  fact  that  they  re- 
quired the  police  to  speak  politely  to  everyone,  did  not  allow  heating, 


WANDERING  ABOUT  BORINQUEN  297 

and  punished  their  own  people  as  well  as  Porto  Ricans,  whereas  the 
Spaniards  always  used  to  be  let  off  free.  Then  the  Americans  gave 
free  schools.  He  had  gone  to  one  himself,  "  but  he  was  not  given 
to  learn."  It  is  a  familiar  refrain  all  over  Porto  Rico,  even  from 
persons  who  have  every  outward  evidence  of  being  bright  as  our 
average.  Doctors  say  there  is  a  special  reason  for  this  backwardness. 

The  peons  of  the  region,  silent-footed,  listless,  are  often  pure 
Caucasian  in  type;  indeed  their  pasty-white  complexions  frequently 
contrast  with  the  tanned  faces  of  northern  visitors.  Now  and  again 
one  wanders  by  looking  startlingly  like  a  three-day  corpse.  They  are 
victims  of  the  hookworm.  There  is  more  hookworm  in  Porto  Rico, 
those  who  should  know  tell  us,  than  in  any  other  country  on  the  globe, 
with  the  possible  exception  of  India  and  Ceylon.  The  disease  was 
brought  by  African  slaves  —  along  with  most  of  the  troubles  of  the 
West  Indies  —  and  while  it  does  little  harm  to  negroes,  it  is  often 
fatal  to  the  whites.  The  population  in  the  rural  areas  makes  no  sani- 
tary provisions,  and  soil  pollution  is  wide-spread;  they  invariably  go 
barefooted,  with  the  result  to  be  expected.  Ninety  per  cent,  of  the 
laboring  class  was  infected  with  hookworm  when  we  took  over  the 
island.  An  active  campaign  was  waged  at  once  and  had  good  results, 
but  with  partial  autonomy  the  populace  has  fallen  back  almost  into  its 
first  pitiable  condition.  The  Rockefeller  Foundation  has  recently  of- 
fered three  fourths  of  the  preliminary  expense  of  a  new  attack  on  the 
disease,  if  the  insular  government  will  bear  the  rest.  For  the  cure  is 
simple ;  it  only  requires  persistence.  Drafted  soldiers  were  treated  for 
it,  and  one  may  easily  detect  the  superiority  in  energy  of  the  camineros 
and  laborers  who  are  still  to  be  seen  in  remnants  of  their  old  uniforms. 
In  a  way  it  is  Porto  Rico's  most  serious  problem.  Even  a  light  infec- 
tion causes  serious  mental  retardation,  and  much  money  that  is  spent 
on  schools  is  lost  because  of  this  defective  mentality. 

The  hookworm  is  troublesome  chiefly  in  the  rural  districts.  The 
poor  of  the  cities,  who  are  bread  eaters,  have  sprue  instead.  Of  late 
only  certified  yeast  from  the  United  States  has  been  permitted  on  the 
island ;  moreover,  sprue  may  be  cured  by  vaccination.  A  more  serious 
thing  is  the  prevalence  of  "  t.  b."  —  which  missionaries  on  the  island 
dub  "  tin  box."  Since  the  Americans  came,  there  has  been  a  constant 
increase  in  zinc  roofs  and  sheet-iron  houses  over  the  old  open-as- wool 
thatch  hovels,  and  as  the  countryman  persists  in  closing  by  night  even 
the  single  tiny  window,  like  that  in  the  end  of  a  box-car,  up  under  the 
eaves  of  his  shacks,  weak  lungs  are  increasing. 


298          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

Fruit  is  abundant  along  the  roads  of  Porto  Rico.  Mere  bananas 
are  so  plentiful  that  they  are  often  abandoned  to  the  goats  and  pigs; 
in  Lares  a  man  with  a  wheelbarrow  full  of  them  was  selling  the  largest 
and  best  at  seven  cents  a  dozen.  Wild  oranges,  sweet,  and  juicy,  for 
all  their  seeds,  line  the  highways  in  what  seems  quan''ty  sufficient  to 
supply  the  entire  demands  of  the  "  Mainland."  Most  of  them  never 
reach  the  market.  Here  and  there  one  runs  across  a  crude  packing- 
house among  the  hills,  but  the  fact  that  a  box  containing  an  average 
of  one  hundred  and  fifty  oranges,  picked,  sorted,  crated,  and  hauled  to 
the  coast,  sells  for  fifty  cents  answers  the  natural  query.  In  the  trade 
these  are  known  as  "  east-side  oranges,"  and  are  generally  sold  by 
pushcart  men  in.  the  tenement  districts  of  our  large  cities  —  at  how 
many  hundred  per  cent,  increase  in  price  purchasers  may  figure  out  for 
themselves. 

Vegetable  growing  has  never  been  favored  by  the  inhabitants  of  our 
strictly  agricultural  little  West  Indian  possession.  Like  all  Latin- 
Americans,  they  are  content  to  do  as  their  forefathers  have  done,  and 
stick  to  the  yams,  yautias,  and  names,  a  coarse  species  of  sweet  potato, 
which  grow  almost  wild,  and  will  have  nothing  to  do  with  Yankee 
innovations,  though  radishes  mature  in  twelve  days,  and  even  Irish 
potatoes  may  be  grown  in  the  higher  altitudes,  and  the  market  price  of 
such  vegetables  is  high.  Bit  by  bit  the  jibaros  may  be  coaxed  to  im- 
prove their  opportunities.  Clusters  of  bee-hives  are  already  common 
sights  in  the  island,  which  can  be  said  of  no  other  section  of  tropical 
America.  The  Federal  Agricultural  Experimental  Station  at  Mayagiiez 
is  to  be  thanked  for  this  improvement.  The  old  legend  that  bees  lose 
their  custom  of  laying  up  honey  after  a  few  seasons  in  a  winterless 
land  was  found  to  be  a  fallacy,  though  they  mix  with  the  wild  black 
bees  of  the  island  and  the  queens  have  to  be  killed  and  replaced  period- 
ically to  keep  the  swarms  from  following  the  example  of  tropical  man 
and  refusing  duty.  Dyewoods,  cabinet  woods,  and  timber  for  building 
are  wholly  lacking  in  Porto  Rico.  Imported  lumber  costs  $100  a 
thousand  square  feet.  No  wonder  huts  are  made  of  yagua,  thatch,  and 
odds  and  ends.  Indeed,  the  Federal  institution  mentioned  above  finds 
it  can  get  better  lumber  out  of  packing-boxes  than  it  can  buy  on  the 
island.  Porto  Rico's  peculiar  condition,  a  tropical  country  in  which 
practically  all  that  the  people  produce  is  shipped  out  of  the  country, 
and  nearly  all  they  consume  shipped  in,  -makes  eventual  improvement 
of  these  conditions  imperative.  It  strikes  the  casual  observer  as  ex- 
traordinary, for  instance,  that  there  are  no  large  manufacturing  in- 


WANDERING  ABOUT  BORINQUEN  299 

dustries  on  the  island,  with  its  excellent  sources  of  water-power  and 
its  unlimited  supply  of  cheap  labor. 

I  drifted  out  along  the  road  from  Aguadilla  southward  one  day. 
The  first  man  to  arouse  my  interest  was  a  little  peon  caminero  clearing 
the  highway  edge  of  weeds,  who  was  so  pretty  he  would  have  made  a 
charming  bride  in  proper  garments.  His  wages  were  $27.60  a  month. 
He  rented  a  "house"  at  $1.50  monthly,  so  large  a  house  because  he 
kept  his  wife's  mother  and  two  sisters,  "  for  they  have  no  other  shel- 
ter." He  said  it  casually,  as  one  epeaks  of  the  weather,  without  the 
faintest  hint  of  the  boasting  an  American  of  his  class  could  scarcely 
divorce  from  such  a  statement.  A  bit  farther  on  a  diseased  old  beggar 
sat  on  the  edge  of  the  road,  the  bottom  of  the  dirty  old  straw  hat  on  the 
ground  before  him  sprinkled  with  copper  cents  —  "  chavos,"  they  call 
them  in  Porto  Rico,  though  the  beggars  soften  their  appeal  by  using  the 
diminutive  "  chavito."  There  is  a  suggestion  of  India  in  the  island's 
prevalence  of  alms-seekers,  —  blind  men  led  by  a  boy  or  a  dog,  dis- 
tressing old  women  publicly  displaying  their  ailments,  cripples  and 
monstrosities  wailing  for  sympathy  from  the  passer-by.  Scarcity  of 
land  and  employment,  abetted  by  the  bad  Latin-American  custom  of 
giving  alms  indiscriminately  even  to  children,  has  brought  a  plague 
of  professional  beggars.  One  such  fellow  in  Mayagiiez  has  pleaded 
himself  into  possession  of  a  twenty-acre  finca  —  and  is  still  begging. 
A  mendicant  of  San  German  complains  that  the  time-table  is  so  badly 
arranged  that  he  has  to  run  to  meet  two  trains.  An  American  medical 
missionary  offered  to  remove  the  cataracts  from  his  eyes  free  of  charge, 
but  he  declined  to  have  his  means  of  livelihood  cut  off.  One  of  our 
Porto  Rican  hosts  was  responding  to  the  appeal  of  an  old  woman  for 
a  "  chavito  "  when  a.  boy  rushed  up  and  cried,  "  Don't  give  her  any- 
thing, senor,  she  has  a  cow !  "  The  crone  dashed  after  the  urchin  with 
an  astonishing  burst  of  speed,  and  returned  out  of  breath  to  wail,  "  It 
is  true,  caballero,  I  admit  it  is  true.  But  I  have  no  pasture,  and  I  must 
beg  now  to  support  the  cow." 

A  long  row  of  men  were  hoeing  new  sugarcane  for  the  "  Central 
Coloso,"  the  tall  stack  of  which  broke  the  almost  flat  horizon  behind 
them.  They  watched  my  approach,  plainly  suspicious  that  any  man 
wearing  shoes  might  be  a  company  spy,  and  worked  with  redoubled 
energy.  They  were  paid  $1.50  for  a  nine-hour  day,  except  two  who 
were  "  sick  "  and  a  boy  of  seventeen,  at  two  thirds  that  amount,  and  the 
capataz,  who  differed  from  the  others  only  by  the  lack  of  a  hoe,  at 


300          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

$1.80.  As  I  turned  away,  the  latter  asked  in  a  soft  voice  if  I  could  tell 
him  the  time.  Then  he  drew  from  his  pocket  an  Ingersoll  watch  and, 
apologizing  for  his  atrevemiento  ("daring"),  requested  me  to  show 
him  how  to  set  it,  the  men  under  him  at  the  same  time  protesting  that 
"  he  should  not  make  so  bold  with  gentlemen."  A  stout,  pure-white 
peon  patching  the  road  farther  on,  snatched  off  his  hat  as  I  spoke  to 
him.  His  wages  had  gone  up  during  the  past  year — from  seventy- 
three  to  eighty  cents  a  day!  But  he  could  earn  little  more  than  half 
that  in  the  coffee  estates  at  home,  so  he  had  been  glad  to  come  down 
to  the  coast  to  work.  I  drifted  upon  and  strolled  for  a  while  along 
the  railroad.  The  section  hands  were  getting  a  dollar  a  day,  which 
sets  Porto  Rico  thirty  years  back  in  that  regard,  for  I  remember  that 
like  wages  were  paid  then  on  the  branch  line  that  passed  my  birthplace. 
Perhaps  the  island's  laborers  earn  no  more  than  they  receive ;  a  gang 
of  ten  men  were  loading  a  cane-cart  in  a  neighboring  field  a  single 
cane  at  a  time.  The  two  old  women  who  were  picking  up  rubbish 
beyond  them  had  never  been  married,  but  they  had  three  and  four 
children  respectively.  They  had  always  been  paid  forty  cents  a  day, 
but  now  they  had  been  promised  a  dollar.  Wht  ther  or  not  they  would 
get  it  only  pay-day  could  tell.  They  accepted  with  alacrity  the  cigar- 
ettes I  offered.  At  noon  I  stepped  into  a  shop-dwelling  to  ask  for 
food.  The  lunch  that  was  finaHy  prepared  would  not  have  over-fed  a 
field  laborer,  yet  the  cost  was  eighty  cents.  The  family  was  moderately 
clean,  and  energetic  above  the  average.  The  four  children  all  went 
to  school.  On  the  wall  of  the  poor  little  hovel,  surrounded  on  all  sides 
by  cane-fields,  the  oldest  boy  had  chalked  in  English,  "  We  have  no 
sugar  because  we  have  sent  it  all  to  the  poor  people  of  Europe." 

Along  the  soft-dirt  private  road  to  the  central  I  met  an  intelligent 
looking  man  of  thirty  or  so,  capable  in  appearance  as  any  American 
mechanic,  Caucasian  of  race,  his  hair  already  turning  gray.  He  begged 
for  a  peseta.  I  opened  my  mouth  to  ask  why  a  big,  strong  fellow  in 
the  prime  of  life  should  be  asking  for  alms,  when  my  eyes  fell  upon 
his  left-leg.  It  was  swollen  to  the  knee  with  elephantiasis,  both  the 
trouser-leg  and  the  skin  having  burst  with  the  expansion.  A  year  ago, 
he  said,  he  had  been  out  on  a  Sunday  excursion  in  the  country,  and 
had  stopped  to  wash  his  feet  in  a  creek.  They  smarted  a  bit  on  the 
way  home,  but  he  thought  nothing  of  it  until,  some  time  later,  his  left 
foot  began  to  swell.  He  was  a  cigar-maker  by  trade,  and  the  Sanidad 
had  refused  to  let  him  work  in  such  a  condition,  yet  the  government 
would  not  take  care  of  him.  So  he  wandered  about  the  country,  where 


WANDERING  ABOUT  BORINQUEN  301 

the  people  were  more  kindly  than  in  the  towns.  The  leg  did  not 
exactly  hurt  any  more,  but  it  seemed  to  drag  all  his  left  side  down  with 
its  weight.  He  would  gladly  go  and  have  it  cut  off,  if  he  could  find 
a  place  to  have  it  done,  though  people  said  even  that  would  not  do 
much  good.  Tears  were  near  the  brim  of  his  eyes,  but  they  did  not 
well  over.  Hopeless  cases  of  this  kind  seem  much  more  pitiful  when 
one  can  talk  to  the  sufferer  and  find  him  a  rational  human  being,  of 
some  education,  than  when  they  are  merely  the  dog-like  wretches  of 
India,  who  seem  scarcely  capable  of  thought. 

One  morning  I  stepped  off  the  night  train  to  Ponce  and  struck  out 
across  the  island  by  the  Utuado  road.  It  was  an  hour  before  I  had 
emerged  from  the  populous  suburbs  of  the  town.  Automobiles  snorted 
past  without  once  offering  a  "  lift."  Not  that  I  wanted  one,  but  one 
gets  an  impression  of  selfishness  in  a  community  that  passes  a  foot- 
traveler  without  a  suggestion  of  help.  It  was  not  universal  here,  how- 
ever. Before  I  had  climbed  a  mile  into  the  foot-hills  a  man  in  a  rattle- 
trap buggy  pulled  his  packages  together  in  the  seat  and  invited  me  to 
jump  in.  It  was  hard  to  explain  my  refusal.  There  were  many  little 
wayside  "  restaurants  "  where  one  would  least  expect  any  demand  for 
such  accommodations.  But  people  must  win  a  livelihood  somehow,  as 
one  of  the  keepers  explained.  Then  came  a  string  of  "  villas,"  of 
Porto  Ricans,  Americans,  and  a  few  Englishmen,  modest  little  summer 
homes  set  where  they  could  look  down  the  valley  upon  the  blue  Carib- 
bean. Here  and  there  were  the  creeper-grown  ruins  of  old  Spanish 
country  houses.  Finally  —  a  joke?  I  hardly  think  so,  for  the  Latin- 
American  countryman  has  as  little  sarcasm  as  sense  of  humor  —  a 
miserable  little  tin  hut,  in  the  yard  of  which  the  owner  and  his  boy 
were  forking  manure,  was  elaborately  announced  in  large  letters  as 
"  Villa  Providencia." 

At  the  first  miriametro-post  the  coffee  began,  bananas  and  guayaba- 
trees  shading  it.  There  passed  much  freight  in  tarpaulin-covered 
wagons,  the  big  brakes  badly  worn.  A  crowded  guagua  rumbled  by, 
the  chauffeur  and  most  of  the  passengers  staring  at  me  with  an  air 
that  said  plainly,  "  Look  at  that  stingy  americano  saving  money  by 
walking !  "  Staring  is  universal  in  Porto  Rico,  at  least  outside  the 
larger  cities.  Even  the  "  schoolmarms,"  always  well-dressed  in  spot- 
less but  cheap  materials,  pause  in  their  lessons  to  gaze  at  the  sight  that 
has  drawn  the  pupils'  attention. 

Three  hours  up  I  had  an  extended  view  of  the  Caribbean,  still  seem- 
ing barely  a  rifle-shot  way.  A  boy  of  eight,  living  a  few  yards  from 


302 

a  school,  had  never  attended  it,  "  because  he  had  to  take  care  of  a  sick 
mare  at  home."  In  the  hovel-store  where  I  had  lunch  three  little  girls 
read  English  to  me  from  their  textbooks.  I  could  understand  them, 
but  only  by  giving  their  curious  pronunciation  the  closest  attention.  Of 
the  information  in  their  Spanish  textbooks  they  had  a  moderate  knowl- 
edge for  their  years!  The  houses  were  constant ;  one  was  never  out  of 
human  sight  or  sound.  The  scarcity  of  dogs  was  in  contrast  to  other 
Latin-American  countries ;  during  an  outbreak  of  bubonic  plague  some 
years  ago  seven  thousand  were  killed  in  Ponce  alone.  In  a  spot  where 
the  roadside  grew  precipitous  a  sad-eyed  peon  stood  looking  at  the  little 
garden  before  his  house,  which  had  fallen  into  the  highway,  more  than 
fifty  feet  below,  during  the  night's  rain.  Higher  still  the  road  reached 
its  point  of  greatest  altitude  and  descended,  more  or  less  abruptly, 
through  artistic  tree-ferns  and  clumps  of  bamboo  to  Adjuntas.  All 
I  remember  of  the  flat  little  town  are  the  oranges  heaped  up  at  the 
roadside,  the  drying  coffee  laid  out  on  burlap  sacks  before  the  sleepy 
little  shops,  and  that  "  Ponce  de  Leon  Brothers "  kept  one  of  the 
clothing  stores. 

Many  big  auto-trucks  were  carrying  bags  of  coffee  in  the  direction 
of  Ponce,  as  others  like  them  carry  tobacco  from  the  region  of  tropical 
glaciers.  The  road  forded  a  river,  but  so  many  stepping-stones  had 
been  laid  across  it  that  I  needed  to  take  off  only  one  shoe.  A  new 
highway  to  Lares  chewed  its  way  upward  into  the  almost  chalky  hills 
to  the  left.  We  certainly  build  good  roads  in  Porto  Rico ;  the  Spanish 
influence  seems  to  have  survived  the  change  of  sovereignty.  The  high- 
Way  under  my  feet  followed  a  rock-tumbled  river  all  the  rest  of  the 
day.  Census-tags  decorated  every  hut.  The  enumerators  did  not  skip 
'their  political  opponents,  as  in  Cuba,  and  though  the  date  had  passed 
after  which  the  tags  might  be  removed,  not  one  of  them  had  been 
touched.  Most  of  the  people  could  not  read  the  printed  permission  to 
do  so;  besides,  they  would  not  dream  of  meddling  in  a  government 
matter.  Sunset  came  early  between  the  mountain  walls  piled  high 
above  me  on  either  side.  Then  fell  the  quick  darkness  of  the  tropics, 
and  there  began  a  constant  creaking  that  suggested  young  frogs.  For 
an  hour  I  plodded  on  into  the  warm  night,  the  road  barely  visible  under 
a  crescent  moon,  in  the  faint  rays  of  which  the  feathery  bamboos  that 
lined  the  highway  for  a  mile  or  more  before  reaching  Utuado,  looked 
weirdly  like  faintly  moving  gigantic  fans. 

Utuado  is  a  large  town  for  its  situation,  and  piled  up  the  first  slopes 
of  the  hills  about  it  in  a  stage-setting  effect.  Dense  masses  of  fog  — 


WANDERING  ABOUT  BORINQUEN  303 

strange  sight  in  the  West  Indies,  where  the  fog-horn  never  breaks  the 
slumber  of  sea  passengers  —  lay  in  its  very  streets  until  the  tropical 
sun  wiped  them  away  toward  nine.  Great  precipices  of  lime-stone  on 
either  side,  a  boiling  river  below,  mountains  of  bold  broken  outline 
ahead,  marked  the  journey  onward.  The  road  climbed  frequently, 
even  though  it  followed  the  growing  river.  Patches  of  tobacco,  as  well 
as  coffee,  covered  the  steep  hillsides ;  vegetation  and  mankind  were 
everywhere.  Here  and  there  the  highway  clung  by  its  fingernails  and 
eyebrows,  as  sailors  say,  along  the  face  of  the  cliff.  Then  it  regained 
solid  footing  and  broke  out  into  a  broad,  flat  coastland,  hot,  dusty,  and 
uninteresting,  with  cane  and  smoke-belching  sugar-mills,  and  hurried 
across  it  to  Atlantic-washed  Arecibo. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

IN   AND  ABOUT  OUR  VIRGIN   ISLANDS 

'TTT  'S  all  I  can  do  to  keep  from  barking  at  you,"  said  a  passenger 

on  the  Virginia,  as  he  crawled  on  hands  and  knees  from  one  of 

M    the  four  kennels  that  decorate  her  af terdeck.     As  a  matter  of  fact, 

we  all  did  a  certain  amount  of  growling  before  the  voyage  was  over. 

Yet  the  four  of  us  who  had  won  the  kennels  were  lucky  dogs  compared 

to  the  unfortunate  dozen  or  more  who  had  to  snatch  what  sleep  they 

could  curled  up  on  the  bare  deck  or  in  a  single  sour-smelling  cabin  below, 

where  neither  color,  sex  nor  seasickness  knew  any  distinction. 

The  weakest  link  in  the  shipping  chain  down  the  West  Indies  is 
that  between  our  own  possessions.  Once  a  week  a  little  schooner  that 
was  built  to  defend  America's  yachting  championship,  but  which  never 
reached  the  finals,  raises  its  wings  in  San  Juan  harbor  and,  the  winds 
willing,  drops  a  flock  of  disgruntled  passengers,  the  United  States  mails, 
and  an  assorted  cargo  in  St.  Thomas  and  St.  Croix  in  time  to  return  for 
a  similar  venture  seven  days  later.  Congressional  committees,  of 
course,  have  their  battleships,  and  the  white-uniformed  governors  of  our 
Virgin  Islands  their  commodious  steam-yacht ;  but  the  mere  garden  va- 
riety of  tax-paying  citizen  has  the  privilege  of  tossing  about  for  several 
days  on  the  Virginia,  subsisting  on  such  food  as  he  has  had  the  fore- 
sight to  bring  with  him,  and  drinking  such  lukewarm  water  as  he  can 
coax  from  the  schooner's  cask. 

It  is  nearly  fifty  miles  from  Porto  Rico  to  St.  Thomas.  All  day  long 
our  racing  yacht  crawled  along  the  coast,  San  Juan  and  the  island's 
culminating  peak,  El  Yunque,  equally  immovable  on  the  horizon,  while 
the  half-grown  crew  alternated  between  pumping  water  from  the  hold 
and  playfully  disobeying  the  orders  of  the  forceless  old  mulatto  captain. 
Nine  at  night  found  us  opposite  Fajardo  light  —  more  than  an  hour 
by  automobile  from  our  starting-point !  While  the  crew  slept,  without 
so  much  as  posting  a  lookout,  a  boy  of  thirteen  sat  at  the  wheel,  and 
the  kennelless  passengers  tossed  restlessly  on  their  chosen  deck  spots. 
A  half -grown  pig  —  the  only  traveler  on  board  whose  ticket  specified 
ship's  food  —  wandered  disconsolately  fore  and  aft,  now  and  then 

304 


IN  AND  ABOUT  OUR  VIRGIN  ISLANDS  305 

demanding  admission  to  one  or  another  of  the  four  "  cabins."  No 
doubt  he  recognized  them  as  built  for  his  own,  rather  than  the  human, 
species. 

Sunrise  overtook  us  still  within  sight  of  Porto  Rico,  but  with  her 
dspendencies  of  Culebra  and  Vieques  abeam,  and  the  hazy  mass  of  the 
Virgin  group  visible  on  the  horizon  ahead.  Brown,  rugged,  strangely 
aged-looking,  Culebra  showed  no  signs  of  life  except  the  lighthouse  set 
upon  its  highest  cliff.  Vieques,  on  the  other  hand,  known  to  English- 
speaking  mariners  as  "  Crab  Island,"  is  a  diminutive  replica  of  Porto 
Rico,  with  four  large  sugar-mills  and  a  population  of  some  eleven 
thousand,  American  citizens  all.  The  Danes  once  claimed  this  also, 
but  Spanish  buccaneers  established  the  more  efficacious  right  of  actual 
possession,  and  at  length  the  Porto  Rican  Government  sent  an  expedi- 
tion to  annex  it  to  the  Spanish  crown. 

With  monotonous  deliberation  the  Virgin  group  grew  in  size  and 
visibility.  St.  Thomas  and  St.  John  took  on  individuality  amid  their 
flock  of  rocky  keys,  and  British  Tortola  gradually  asserted  its  aloofness 
from  the  American  islands.  Far  off  on  the  blue-gray  horizon  we  could 
even  make  out  St.  Croix,  like  a  stain  on  the  inverted  bowl  of  sky. 
Yet,  though  the  breeze  was  strong,  it  was  a  head  wind,  and  the  ocean 
current  sweeping  in  from  the  eastward  held  us  all  but  motionless  when 
we  seemed  to  be  cutting  swiftly  through  the  light  waves.  For  five 
profane  hours  we  tacked  to  and  fro  within  gunshot  of  a  towering  white 
boulder  jutting  forth  from  the  sea,  and  fittingly  known  as  Sail  Rock, 
without  seeming  to  advance  a  mile  on  our  journey. 

We  turned  the  isolated  precipice  at  last,  and  headed  in  toward  moun- 
tainous St.  Thomas.  Neither  its  scattered  keys  nor  its  long  broken 
coast-line  showed  any  evidence  of  habitation,  but  at  length  three  white 
specks  appeared  on  its  water's  edge,  and  grew  with  the  afternoon  to  a 
semblance  of  Charlotte  Amalie,  a  city  rivaled  in  its  beauty,  at  a  dis- 
tance, by  few  others  even  in  the  beautiful  West  Indies.  We  greeted  it 
with  fervent  exclamations  of  delight,  piled  up  white  and  radiant  in  the 
moonlight  on  its  three  hills,  like  occupants  of  royal  boxes  at  some  gala 
performance  in  its  amphitheatrical  harbor  below.  Scarcely  a  sound 
came  from  it,  however,  except  the  languid  swish  of  the  waves  on 
what  seemed  to  be  the  base  of  its  lower  houses,  as  we  dropped  anchor 
near  midnight  within  rowboat  distance  of  the  wharves..  It  had  been  an 
unusually  swift  voyage,  according  to  the  uncommanding  captain,  a  mere 
two  days  instead  of  the  four  or  five  it  frequently  requires. 

In  due  course  of  time  a  negro  youth  rowed  out  to  examine  us.     He 


306          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

was  an  exceedingly  courteous  negro,  to  be  sure,  his  white  uniform  was 
spotless,  and  his  English  impeccable;  but  there  was  something  incon- 
gruous in  the  fact  that  American  citizens  must  have  his  permission  to 
be  admitted  into  one  American  possession  from  another.  The  "  Grand 
Hotel,"  which  virtually  monopolizes  the  accommodation  of  transients 
in  St.  Thomas,  could  not  house  us,  or  rather,  on  second  thought,  it 
could,  if  we  would  be  contented  in  the  "annex  "  over  a  barber-shop 
across  the  street.  Its  creaking  floors  were  unbroken  expanses  of 
spaciousness,  but  at  least  there  was  a  mahogany  four-poster  in  one 
corner.  We  sat  down  on  it  with  a  sigh  of  contentment  —  and  quickly 
stood  up  again,  under  the  impression  that  we  had  inadvertently  sat 
upon  the  floor.  The  Virgin  Islands  have  not  yet  reached  that  decadent 
degree  of  civilization  that  requires  bed-springs.  As  to  a  bath  —  cer- 
tainly, it  should  be  brought  at  once;  and  a  half  hour  later  a  loose- 
kneed  negro  wandered  in  and  set  down  on  the  floor,  with  the  rattle  of 
a  hardware-shop  in  a  tornado,  a  large  tin  pan,  red  with  rust.  All  we 
had  to  do,  explained  the  ultra-courteous  octoroon  manager,  was  to  call 
another  negro  to  bring  a  pail  of  water  when  —  and  the  emphasis  sug- 
gested that  the  time  was  still  far  off  —  we  "  desired  to  perform  our 
ablutions."  The  tub-bearer  was  evidently  too  worn  out  from  his  extra- 
ordinary exertion  to  indulge  in  another  before  he  had  taken  time  to 
recuperate. 

That  loose-kneed  stroll  of  the  Virgin-Islander  is  typical  of  all  his 
processes,  mental,  moral,  or  physical.  It  is  not  merely  slow,  rythmical, 
and  dignified;  there  is  in  it  a  suggestion  of  limitless  wealth,  an  un- 
troubled conscience,  and  an  ancestry  devoted  to  leisurely  pursuits  for 
untold  generations.  In  local  parlance  a  "  five  minutes'  walk  "  means  a 
block.  One  must  not  even  speak  hastily  to  a  native,  for  the  only  result 
is  wasted  breath  and  the  necessity  of  repeating  the  question  in  more 
measured  cadences.  Politeness  oozes  from  his  every  pore ;  "  at  your 
sarvice,  sar,"  and  "  only  too  glad  to  be  of  use,  ma'am,"  interlard  every 
conversation;  but  any  attempt,  courteous  or  otherwise,  to  hurry  the 
Virgin  Islander  brings  a  sullen  resentment  which  you  will  never 
succeed  in  smiling  away.  As  the  navy  men  who  are  governing 
him  put  it  in  the  technical  vernacular  of  their  calling,  he  has  only  two 
speeds, —  "  Slow  Ahead  "  and  "  Stop." 

Once  the  visitor  has  shaken  off  the  no  doubt  ridiculous  notion  that 
things  should  be  done  in  a  hurry,  or  done  at  all,  for  that  matter,  he  will 
find  our  newly  adopted  children  an  amusing  addition  to  the  family. 
Like  all  negroes  in  contact  with  civilization,  they  are  fond  of  four^ 


IN  AND  ABOUT  OUR  VIRGIN  ISLANDS  307 

jointed  words  where  monosyllables  would  suffice,  and  of  pompous, 
rounded  sentences  in  place  of  brief-to-the-point  statements.  "  Pres- 
ently "  means  "now  " ;  "  He  detained  from  coming  "  is  the  local  form  of 
"  he  can't  come."  Talking  is  one  of  the  Virgin  Islanders'  chief  recrea- 
tions. They  buttonhole  the  unknown  passerby  and  unburden  them- 
selves to  him  at  endless  length,  ceaselessly  chattering  on  until  he  can 
forge  some  excuse  to  tear  himself  away,  when  they  hasten  to  ask  their 
friends  if  they,  too,  have  seen  "  the  stranger  with  the  beard,"  "  the 
American  who  arrived  last  night,"  "  that  rich-looking  gentleman  in  a 
white  helmet,"  that  the  friends  may  not  lose  their  chance  of  waylaying 
the  victim  who  is  already  listening  to  a  new  monologue  around  the 
corner.  If  they  can  not  find  a  hearer,  they  do  not  for  that  reason 
abandon  their  favorite  sport;  it  is  commonplace  to  meet  a  pedestrian, 
particularly  a  woman,  chattering  volubly  to  herself  as  she  shuffles  along 
the  street. 

Their  lack  of  self-restraint  is  on  a  par  with  their  loquacity.  When 
the  first  navy  hydroplanes  flew  into  the  harbor,  the  entire  population 
became  a  screaming  mob  of  neck-craning,  pointing,  shoulder-clapping, 
occupation-forgetting  children.  The  winner  of  a  dollar  at  the  local 
"  horse  "  races,  in  which  the  island  donkeys  are  now  and  then  pitted 
against  one  another,  may  be  seen  turning  somersaults  in  the  midst 
of  the  crowd,  or  throwing  himself  on  the  ground,  all  fours  clawing 
the  air,  as  he  shrieks  his  ecstasies  of  delight.  It  is  their  joy  to  parade 
the  streets  in  their  gayest  costumes  on  any  holiday,  American,  Dan- 
ish, or  imaginable,  that  can  be  dragged  into  the  calendar,  dancing  and 
capering  with  an  energy  which  their  work-a-day  manner  never  sug- 
gests. Once  a  month,  at  full  moon,  the  local  band  marches  through 
the  town  playing  "  Onward,  Christian  Soldiers,"  the  population  trail- 
ing en  masse  behind  it,  singing,  clapping  hands,  and  swaying  their 
rather  slender,  underfed  bodies  violently  in  cadence  with  the  music. 
They  are  ardent  church-goers  in  theory,  there  being  six  large  churches 
of  as  many  denominations  in  town  —  but  it  takes  a  rousing  round  of 
hymns  to  bring  the  majority  to  indoor  services,  though  boatmen  far 
out  in  the  bay  recognize  a  street  meeting  of  the  Salvation  Army  by  the 
howling  chorus  of  "  Lord,  ha'  mercy  on  mah  sou-ul,"  which  the  cliffs 
echo  out  to  them. 

The  Sunday  evening  band  concert,  on  the  other  hand,  is  staid  enough 
to  make  a  Spanish-American  retreta  seem  uproarious  by  comparison. 
It  begins  at  nine,  after  the  last  church  service  of  a  Britishly  dead  Sun- 
day. The  native  band,  recruited  by  the  administrative  Americans, 


308  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

jet  black  in  features  and  snow-white  in  uniform,  mounts  to  the  roof 
of  the  old  red  fortress,  while  outwardly  immaculate  negroes,  stroll 
rather  funereally  about  little  Emancipation  Park  and  along  the  edge 
of  the  quay.  The  elite  of  the  town  sit  in  their  houses,  piled  steeply  up 
the  pyramidal  hills,  and  let  the  music  float  up  to  them  on  the  harbor 
breeze.  Our  new  fellow-countrymen  are  ostentatiously  patriotic  in 
all  that  concerns  mere  formalities.  Every  morning  at  eight  all  St 
Thomas  becomes  static  when  the  marine  band  plays  our  national  an- 
them. The  market-women  on  the  wharf  halt  as  if  suddenly  turned  to 
stone,  holding  whatever  posture  they  happen  to  be  caught  in  until  the 
last  note  has  died  away;  the  very  boatmen  in  the  bay  sit  with  their 
poised  oars  motionless.  Flags  burst  forth  not  merely  on  our  own  holi- 
days, but  on  Danish,  on  every  possible  fete  day,  public  or  private,  even 
on  the  birthdays  of  distant  relatives  or  mere  friends.  Curious  super- 
stitions enliven  the  quaint  local  color.  The  appearance  of  a  lizard  in 
the  house  is  sure  proof  to  the  lower  classes  that  there  is  soon  to  be  an 
addition  to  the  family.  Servant  girls  cannot  be  induced  to  remove 
their  hats,  whether  cooking,  making  beds,  or  waiting  on  table  at  the 
most  formal  dinner,  for  fear  of  sudden  death  from  "  dew "  falling 
on  their  heads  —  though  it  be  full  blazing  noonday. 

The  great  majority  of  the  population  is  undernourished.  Even 
when  their  earnings  are  sufficient,  most  of  the  money  is  spent  on 
dress.  The  chief  diet  of  the  rank  and  file  is  sugar.  A  sugar-cane 
three  times  a  day  seems  to  be  enough  to  keep  many  of  them  alive.  The 
morning  meal  for  the  rest  consists  of  "  tea  "  only,  the  local  meaning 
of  that  word  being  a  cupful  of  sugar  dissolved  in  warm  water.  Then 
along  in  the  middle  of  the  afternoon  they  indulge  in  their  only  real 
food,  and  not  very  real  at  that.  This  is  a  plate  of  "  fungee,"  a  nau- 
seating mixture  of  fish  and  corn-meal,  which  to  the  local  taste  is  pre- 
ferable to  the  most  succulent  beefsteak.  The  natural  result  of  the  con- 
stant consumption  of  sugar  is  an  early  scarcity  of  teeth.  Barely  three 
men  in  twenty  could  be  enlisted  in  the  native  corps,  chiefly  because 
of  their  inability  to  cope  with  navy  rations. 

It  goes  without  saying  that  such  a  population  does  not  furnish 
model  workmen.  From  Friday  night  to  Tuesday  morning  is  apt 
to  be  treated  as  "  the  Sabbath."  The  man  who  works  two  days  a 
week  at  eighty  cents  has  enough  to  provide  himself  with  sugar-cane 
and  "  fungee."  On  the  whole,  the  women  are  more  industrious  than 
the  men,  perhaps  because  the  great  disparity  of  sexes  makes  the  pos- 


IN  AND  ABOUT  OUR  VIRGIN  ISLANDS  309 

session  of  a  *'  man  "  something  in  the  nature  of  a  luxury.  Time  was 
when  the  women  of  St.  Thomas  were  able  to  support  their  husbands 
in  a  more  fitting  manner  than  at  present.  In  the  good  old  days  hundreds 
of  ships  coaled  here  every  month;  now  many  a  day  passes  without 
one  bringing  a  throng  of  negresses  scampering  for  the  coaling-wharf 
far  out  beyond  "  Bluebeard's  Castle."  In  a  constant  stream  the  soot- 
draped  women  jog  up  the  gang-plank,  balancing  the  eighty-pound 
basket  of  coal  on  their  heads,  often  without  touching  it,  thrust  out  a 
begrimed  hand  for  the  three  cents  a  trip  which  a  local  labor  leader  has 
won  them  in  place  of  the  original  one,  drop  the  coins  into  a  dust-laden 
pocket,  dump  their  load  into  the  steamer's  chute,  and  trot  down  again. 
Sometimes  the  ship  is  a  man-of-war  that  unfairly  speeds  up  the  pace 
of  coalers  by  having  its  band  play  rousing  music  on  the  upper  deck. 
Here  and  there  a  man  may  be  made  out  in  the  endless  chain  of  black 
humanity.  At  least  one  of  them  works  with  his  wife  as  a  "  team  " 
—  by  carrying  the  empty  basket  back  to  be  filled  while  she  mounts 
with  the  full  one.  But  most  of  the  males  have  the  point  of  view  of  the 
big  "  buck  nigger  "  who  was  lying  in  the  shade  of  the  coal-pile  watch- 
ing the  process  with  an  air  of  languid  contentment.  "  Why  de  coalin' 
is  done  by  women,  sah  ?  "  he  repeated,  scratching  his  head  for  a  re- 
ply. "  Why,  dat  's  woman's  work." 

The  population  of  our  Virgin  Islands  is  overwhelmingly  negro. 
Even  Charlotte  Amalie  cannot  muster  one  white  man  to  ten  of  African 
ancestry,  and  not  a  fourth  of  the  latter  show  any  Caucasian  mixture. 
Once  upon  a  time  the  Jews  were  numerous;  there  is  still  a  Jewish 
cemetery,  but  the  synagogue  has  been  abandoned  for  lack  of  congre- 
gation. Though  the  islands  were  Danish  for  nearly  two  and  a  half 
centuries,  their  language  has  always  been  English,  probably  because 
their  business  has  ever  been  with  ships  and  men  who,  though  it  may 
not  always  have  been  their  native  tongue,  spoke  the  language  of  the 
sea.  Some  six  years  before  we  purchased  the  islands  the  Danes  made 
an  attempt  to  teach  Danish  in  the  schools.  But  though  many  little 
negroes  learned  to  chatter  more  or  less  fluently  in  that  tongue,  to  the 
detriment  of  more  essential  studies,  the  local  environment  proved  too 
strong,  and  the  very  Danish  officials  became  proficient  in  English  in 
spite  of  themselves,  though  even  the  British  school  superintendent  was 
required  to  write  his  correspondence  and  reports  in  the  official  tongue. 

The  only  element  of  the  population  that  has  never  succumbed  to 
its  environment,  either  racially  or  linguistically,  are  the  "  Chachas." 


310          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

They  are  a  community  of  French  fishermen,  who  have  themselves  lost 
any  certain  notion  of  how  they  came  to  be  stranded  on  rocky  St. 
Thomas.  Some  two  hundred  of  them  live  in  their  own  village  on  the 
outskirts  of  Charlotte  Amalie;  others  are  scattered  along  the  trail  to 
a  similar  village  called  Hull,  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  island.  In- 
termarriage has  given  them  all  a  striking  family  resemblance,  and 
it  is  hours  before  the  newcomer  realizes  that  it  is  not  the  same  man  he 
has  met  over  and  over  again,  peddling  his  fish,  his  goats,  or  his  crude 
straw  hats  in  the  streets  of  the  town,  but  a  score  of  more  or  less  close 
relatives.  They  have  preserved  their  blood  pure  from  the  slightest 
negro  strain;  but  their  aloofness  has  given  them  a  sort  of  sick-bed 
pallor,  an  anemia  both  of  physique  and  manner,  especially  among  the 
women,  an  almost  complete  loss  of  teeth,  and  little  power  to  resist  dis- 
ease. Yet  the  men  at  least  have  by  no  means  lost  their  old  "  pep." 
They  can  still  fight  in  a  two-fisted  manner  that  is  the  awe  of  their 
negro  neighbors,  and  they  venture  fearlessly  far  out  to  sea  in  their 
little  narrow-chested  fishing  boats. 

The  adults  speak  a  perfectly  comprehensible  French,  but  the 
"  Creole  "  of  the  children  is  but  little  improvement  on  that  of  Haiti. 
For  many  years  they  had  their  own  school,  taught  by  an  old  French- 
man who  drew  the  princely  salary  of  five  dollars  a  month.  Since 
his  death  the  children  have  been'attending  the  English-speaking  Catho- 
lic school,  and  some  of  them  already  mispronounce  a  certain  amount 
of  that  tongue  —  and  can  beg  as  fluently  as  the  little  black  urchins 
that  swarm  about  any  white  stranger.  But  their  aloofness  from  the 
colored  population  remains.  The  latter  scorn  them  as  only  a  negro 
can  the  white  man  who  has  fallen  socially  to  his  own  level,  though  they 
take  care  not  to  refer  to  them  by  the  popular  nickname  within  reach 
of  their  hardened  fists.  The  term  is  said  to  have  had  its  origin  in 
the  word  chasser  with  which  the  fishermen  interlard  their  cries.  They 
call  themselves  frangais,  and  have  a  simplicity  which  suggests  they 
have  followed  the  same  calling  for  many  generations.  Their  houses 
are  mere  cabins,  with  shingled  walls  and  thatched  roofs,  scattered 
about  the  sand  knolls  at  the  edge  of  the  bay.  These  are  always  floored, 
decorated  with  a  few  chromo  prints  of  a  religious  nature,  and  have 
A  better  claim  to  neatness  than  the  hovels  of  the  negroes  about  them. 
While  the  latter  loaf,  the  "  Chachas  "  ply  their  chosen  calling  dili- 
gently, but  on  Sunday  afternoons  they  may  be  found  in  groups,  play- 
ing cards  in  the  shade  of  their  date  palms,  their  curious  hats  of  sewn 


IN  AND  ABOUT  OUR  VIRGIN  ISLANDS  311 

ribbons  of  straw  tossed  on  the  sandy  soil  about  them.  They  profess 
complete  indifference  to  their  island's  change  of  sovereignty,  except  to 
wonder  in  vague  voices  if  it  is  this  that  has  brought  the  appalling  in- 
crease in  the  prices  of  food. 

Seen  from  any  of  its  three  hills,  Charlotte  Amalie  looks  more  like  a 
stage  setting  than  a  real  town.  Its  sheet-iron  roofs,  many  of  them 
painted  red,  seem  to  be  cut  out  of  cardboard,  and  the  steepness  of 
the  slopes  on  which  the  majority  of  its  houses  are  built  suggests  the 
fantasy  of  the  scene-painter  rather  than  cold  practicability.  A  single 
long,  level  street,  still  known,  on  its  placards  at  least,  as  Kronprindsens 
Gade,  runs  the  length  of  the  town  and  contains  nearly  all  its  commerce. 
The  rest  start  bravely  up  the  steep  hills,  but  soon  tire,  like  the  in- 
habitants, and  leave  their  task  incompleted.  On  the  eastern  side,  where 
the  storms  come  from,  the  houses  have  glass  windows,  almost  un- 
known in  the  larger  islands  to  the  westward,  and  are  fitted  on  all  sides 
with  heavy  wooden  hurricane-shutters.  If  these  are  closed  in  time,  the 
roofs  can  withstand  the  frequent  high  winds  that  sweep  down  upon 
the  island,  but  the  local  weather  prophet  has  an  unenviable  task,  for 
to  give  the  signal  for  closing  the  shutters  when  there  is  no  need  for 
it  is  as  reprehensible  from  the  native  point  of  view  as  to  fail  to  fore- 
see real  danger.  Bulky  stone  or  brick  ovens,  separate  from  the  houses, 
are  the  only  buildings  with  chimneys,  and  many  of  these  were  mutil- 
ated by  the  hurricane  of  four  years  ago.  Palm-trees  and  great  masses 
of  red  and  purple  bougainvillea  add  a  crowning  beauty  to  a  scene  that 
would  be  entrancing  even  without  them. 

Of  a  score  of  solemn  old  buildings  the  most  imposing  is  the  resi- 
dence of  the  governor  on  the  middle  of  the  three  hills.  Higher  still 
stands  a  grim  tower  known  as  "  Blackbeard's  Castle,"  about  which 
cling  many  legends,  but  no  other  certainty  than  that  it  was  built  by  a 
turbulent  colonist  of  long  ago,  who  was  credited,  justly  no  doubt,  since 
that  clan  has  not  wholly  died  out  in  St.  Thomas  to  this  day,  with  being 
a  pirate.  But  this  structure  is  of  slight  interest  to  the  average  visitor 
compared  to  a  similar  one  on  the  eastern  hill,  reputed  far  and  wide 
as  the  original  "  Bluebeard's  Castle."  Just  how  it  gained  this  reputa- 
tion is  not  easily  apparent,  for  its  real  history  is  almost  an  open  book. 
Built  by  the  Danish  government  in  1700  as  a  fort,  probably  to  overawe 
the  slaves  in  the  town  below,  it  remained  the  property  of  the  king 
until  a  century  ago,  when  it  fell  into  private  hands.  If  any  other 


3i2  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

proof  of  its  entirely  unromantic  character  is  needed,  it  is  sufficient  to 
know  that  it  now  belongs  to  an  Episcopal  clergyman  living  in  Brook- 
lyn! 

With  stone  walls  five  feet  thick,  three  rooms  one  above  the  other, 
and  all  in  all  a  pitiless  visage,  the  tower  easily  lends  itself  to  the 
imagination  as  the  scene  of  marital  treachery.  The  old  negro  care- 
taker will  assure  you  that  the  dreadful  crimes  took  place  in  it  "  jes'  like 
de  storybook  tell."  The  yarn  that  has  a  wider  local  belief  is  some- 
what different.  According  to  this  an  old  trader  married  a  beautiful 
girl  of  Charlotte  Amalie  and  locked  her  up  in  the  castle  while  he  left 
the  island  on  business.  During  his  absence  she  discovered  a  mysteri- 
ous old  chest  in  the  upper  story  and  finally  yielded  to  the  feminine  im- 
pulse to  open  it.  In  it  she  found  letters  from  a  dozen  of  her  hus- 
band's discarded  sweethearts,  all  of  whom  still  lived  in  the  town.  She 
invited  them  to  a  banquet  in  the  castle  —  the  significant  detail  of  how 
she  got  the  door  open  being  passed  over  in  silence  —  and  poisoned 
them.  From  there  on  the  tale  forks.  One  ending  has  it  that  the 
husband  returned,  repented,  and  committed  suicide  while  the  beauti- 
ful wife  was  being  tried  for  murder;  the  other,  that  he  rushed  in  and 
carried  her  off  just  as  she  was  about  to  be  burned  at  the  stake. 

The  eyes  of  the  modern  visitor  are  sure  to  be  drawn  to  what  looks 
like  an  attempt  to  pave  a  large  section  of  the  steep  hill  behind  the  town. 
A  great  triangular  patch  of  cement  gleaming  in  the  sun  on  one  of  the 
slopes  brings  to  mind  the  island's  greatest  problem.  St.  Thomas  de- 
pends entirely  upon  the  rains  for  her  water-supply,  for  the  water  to  be 
had  by  boring  is  so  brackish  that  it  ruins  even  a  steamer's  boilers. 
When  renting  or  buying  a  house  the  most  important  question  is  to 
know  the  size  and  condition  of  its  cistern  and  what  provision  has  been 
made  for  filling  it.  In  the  dry  season,  which  is  heartlessly  long  and 
appallingly  dry,  the  poorer  people  wander  from  house  to  house  beg- 
ging a  "  pan  "  of  water,  and  the  word  means  a  receptacle  of  any  size 
or  shape  that  will  hold  the  precious  liquid.  The  town  is  convinced 
that  its  commercial  decline  is  due  to  its  lack  of  water,  and  that  it  will 
come  into  its  own  again  if  only  Uncle  Sam  will  cover  its  hillsides  with 
cement  or  galvanized  iron.  If  they  had  immense  cisterns  and  a  means 
of  filling  them,  they  say,  ships  would  no  longer  go  to  Ponce  for  water, 
and  perhaps  pick  up  their  coal  in  Porto  Rico  also,  but  would  put  in  at 
St.  Thomas  for  all  their  supplies.  To  make  matters  worse,  the  change 
of  sovereignty  has  brought  with  it  the  inability  to  furnish  other  liquids 
for  which  sea-faring  men  have  looked  to  St.  Thomas  for  centuries. 


IN  AND  ABOUT  OUR  VIRGIN  ISLANDS  313 

That  seemed  the  last  straw,  but  another  has  since  been  added  to  the  al- 
ready crushing  burden.  St.  Thomas  has  long  been  famous  for  its  bay 
rum.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  bay  oil  comes  from  St.  John  and  the  rum 
came  from  St.  Croix,  until  the  colonial  council  voted  the  islands  "  dry  " 
— "  as  if  we  were  not  dry  enough  already."  But  the  mixture  and  sale 
thereof  brought  many  a  dollar  into  local  pockets.  Soon  after  the 
"  dry  "  law  went  into  effect,  the  natives,  to  say  nothing  of  our  thirsty 
marines,  made  the  brilliant  discovery  that  the  addition  of  a  bit  of  bay 
oil  to  their  favorite  refreshment  left  it  none  the  less  exhilarating.  Ban- 
ished hilarity  returned.  The  governor  was  shocked  beyond  measure 
and  the  sale  even  of  bay  rum  is  now  forbidden  except  on  a  police  per- 
mit, issued  only  on  proof  that  it  was  not  to  be  used  for  beverage 
purposes.  It  is  almost  as  easy  to  prove  that  the  moon  is  made  of 
green  cheese.  The  Virgin  Islanders  have  several  grievances  against 
the  Americans  who  have  adopted  them,  the  strictness  of  their  color- 
line,  for  instance ;  but  the  greatest  of  these  is  prohibition. 

The  cluster  of  islands  just  east  of  Porto  Rico  was  discovered  by 
Columbus  on  his  second  voyage;  anything  that  escaped  him  on  the 
first  journey  seems  to  enjoy  at  least  that  secondary  distinction.  He 
named  them  the  Eleven  Thousand  Virgins ;  just  why,  not  even  his 
biographers  seem  to  know.  It  may  be  that  he  had  just  been  awakened 
from  a  bad  dream,  or  possibly  the  expression  was  an  old-fashioned 
Italian  form  of  profanity.  It  would  be  easy  to  think  of  a  more  ap- 
propriate name,  but  they  have  remained  the  Virgin  Islands  to  this 
day. 

The  Spaniards  stopped  long  enough  to  exterminate  the  Indians,  but 
it  was  a  long  time  before  any  one  thought  it  worth  while  to  settle  in 
such  a  region.  Nothing  is  more  natural  than  that  the  name  should 
finally  have  attracted  to  it  a  party  of  Frenchmen.  Evidently  they 
found  it  disappointing,  for  they  did  not  increase.  Then  the  Danish 
West  India  Company  laid  claim  to  St.  Thomas  and  its  adjacent 
islands,  and  in  1671  a  governor  was  sent  out  from  Denmark,  who 
founded  the  town  of  Charlotte  Amalie,  which  he  named  for  the  then 
Danish  queen.  Of  course  the  British  captured  the  place  a  few  times, 
and  it  was  often  harassed  by  fires,  hurricanes,  and  slave  rebellions, 
all  of  which  it  more  or  less  successfully  survived.  St.  Thomas  be- 
came a  harbor  of  refuge  for  pirates,  and  it  frequently  became  neces- 
sary for  the  English  governor  of  Nevis  to  raid  it  —  for  the  British, 
you  remember,  did  not  believe  in  piracy.  When  the  gentlemen  en- 


314          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

listed  under  the  skull-and-cross-bones  banner  had  gone  the  way  of 
all  rascals,  the  island  soon  won  a  place  of  importance  as  a  distributing 
center  for  slaves. 

Meanwhile  St.  Croix,  which  is  neither  geographically,  geologically, 
nor  historically  a  bona  fide  member  of  the  Virgin  group,  had  been  hav- 
ing a  history  of  its  own.  The  Knights  of  Malta  colonized  it  first 
with  three  hundred  Frenchmen,  but  these  soon  decided  that  Santo 
Domingo  offered  better  real  estate  possibilities.  Then  when  the  Dutch 
and  the  British  had  concluded  that  France  had  a  better  armed  right  to 
it,  the  latter  sold  it  to  the  Danish  Company  for  750,000  livres.  Just 
how  much  that  was  in  real  money  I  am  not  in  a  position  to  state,  be- 
yond the  assertion  that  it  would  buy  far  more  then  than  it  will  nowa- 
days. Thenceforth  St.  Croix  has  followed  the  fate  of  the  other  Dan* 
ish  West  Indies. 

Many  of  the  colonists  were  disturbers  of  the  peace  or  agitators,, 
the  Bolshevists,  in  short,  of  those  days,  who  found  it  to  their  ad-- 
vantage to  abandon  the  near-by  French  and  British  Leeward  Islands. 
They  became  too  much  for  the  Company,  which  in  1764  sold 
the  whole  collection  to  the  Danish  crown.  All  three  of  the  islands 
of  any  importance  were  long  planted  in  sugar-cane.  It  covered  even 
the  tops  of  the  hills,  those  of  St.  Thomas  being  cultivated  by  hand 
in  little  stone-faced  terraces.  To-day  sugar-cane  has  completely  dis- 
appeared from  St.  Thomas,  almost  entirely  from  St.  John,  and  is 
grown  only  on  the  level  southern  side  of  St.  Croix.  Several  slave 
uprisings  had  been  suppressed  with  more  or  less  bloodshed  when  Den- 
mark subscribed  to  the  then  astounding  theory  that  slavery  should 
be  abolished.  The  agricultural  importance  of  the  islands  began  at 
once  to  decline.  Free  labor  was  cheap,  but  it  would  not  labor.  Then, 
too,  the  competition  of  sugar  grown  more  economically  elsewhere  and 
Napoleon's  establishment  of  a  bounty  for  beet-sugar  growers  began 
to  make  life  dreary  for  all  West  Indian  planters. 

However,  as  their  agriculture  declined,  the  importance  of  the  Dan- 
ish islands  as  a  shipping  and  distributing  center  increased,  though 
their  days  of  greatest  prosperity  were  from  1820  to  1830,  when  the 
two  coincided.  St.  Thomas  harbor  was  forested  with  the  masts  of 
sailing  vessels,  carrying  goods  to  and  from  the  four  points  of  the 
compass.  Then  along  came  Robert  Fulton  with  more  trouble  for  the 
poor  harassed  islanders.  Steam  navigation  made  it  easy  for  the 
West  Indies  and  South  America  to  import  goods  direct  from  Europe, 
and  the  Virgin  Island  merchants  began  to  lose  their  rake-off.  They 


IN  AND  ABOUT  OUR  VIRGIN  ISLANDS  315 

picked  tip,  however,  by  establishing  a  coaling  station  and  making  Stw 
Thomas  a  free  port  and  a  general  depot  of  sea-going  supplies.  Be- 
fore the  World  War  scores  of  ships  entered  the  harbor  every  week; 
now  the  pilot  often  does  not  drop  his  feet  from  his  hammock  to  the 
floor  for  several  days  at  a  time. 

For  all  this,  the  islands  were  a  liability  rather  than  an  asset  to  the 
Danes,  and  they  had  long  been  looking  for  some  kind  Samaritan  to 
take  them  off  their  hands.  Under  Lincoln,  Secretary  Seward  nego- 
tiated a  treaty  by  which  we  were  to  have  all  the  group  except  St. 
Croix  for  $7,500,000.  A  vote  of  the  population  showed  them  over- 
whelmingly in  favor  of  the  change;  the  Danish  Government  was 
paternal,  but  it  was  far  away  and  unprogressive.  The  treaty  was 
ratified  in  Denmark.  The  king  issued  a  manifesto  telling  his  loyal 
subjects  how  sorry  he  was  to  part  with  them,  but  assuring  them,  as 
fathers  always  do,  that  it  was  for  their  own  good.  He  did  not  men- 
tion that  he  needed  the  money.  Two  years  later  he  was  forced  to 
admit  in  another  royal  document  that  he  was  not  parting  with  them, 
after  all.  Senator  Sumner,  chairman  of  our  Foreign  Relations  Com- 
mittee, did  not  walk  hand  in  hand  with  President  Johnson.  For  two 
years  he  kept  the  treaty  in  his  official  pocket,  and  when  it  did  at  length 
reappear  under  Grant,  it  was  adversely  reported. 

In  1902  a  better  bargain  was  struck.  A  new  treaty  setting  the  price, 
of  the  whole  group  at  $5,000,000  was  drawn  up,  and  ratified  by  the 
American  Senate.  But  this  time  the  Danish  Rigsdag  turned  the  tables. 
Perhaps  they  had  inside  information  on  the  future  development  of 
American  politics.  If  so  it  proved  trustworthy,  for  by  1916  we  were 
in  the  hands  of  an  administration  to  whom  mere  money  was  no  object, 
The  Danes  quickly  caught  the  idea,  the  people  themselves  voted  to  self 
while  the  selling  was  good,  and  on  the  last  day  of  March,  1917,  old 
Danneborg  was  hauled  down  and  the  Stars  and  Stripes  raised  in  its 
place. 

I  have  yet  to  find  any  one  who  knows  just  why  we  bought  the  Vir- 
gin Islands,  still  less  why  we  paid  twenty-five  millions  for  them.  As 
a  navy  man  engaged  in  governing  them  put  it,  "  They  are  not  worth 
forty  cents  to  us,  or  to  any  one  else ;  though  "  he  added,  "  it  would  have 
been  worth  a  hundred  million  to  keep  Germany  from  getting  them." 
If  the  loss  of  the  twenty-five  millions  were  an  end  of  the  matter,  we 
might  forget  it;  but  it  is  costing  us  more  than  half  a  million  a  year  to 
support  our  little  black  children.  Furthermore,  the  Danes  made  the 


316          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

most  of  their  ripe  opportunity  not  only  in  the  matter  of  price,  but  in 
an  astonishing  number  of  concessions  in  their  favor.  Evidently  our 
Government  said  to  them,  "  Go  ahead  and  write  a  treaty,  and  we  '11  sign 
it " ;  and  then  in  the  press  of  saving  the  world  for  democracy  we  did 
not  have  time  to  glance  it  over  before  adding  our  signature. 

If  a  farmer  bought  a  farm  for,  say,  twenty-five  hundred  dollars, 
and  found,  when  he  came  to  take  possession  of  it,  that  it  would  cost 
him  fifty  dollars  a  year  out  of  his  pocket  to  run  it,  that  it  was  in- 
habited by  a  happy-go-lucky  lot  of  negroes  who  expected  him  to  do 
many  things  for  them,  from  curing  their  wide-spread  disease  to  send- 
ing them  to  school;  if,  furthermore,  he  discovered  that  the  former 
owners  still  held  everything  on  the  farm  that  was  worth  owning 
except  the  title-deed,  he  would  probably  give  it  away  to  the  first  un- 
suspecting tenderfoot  who  happened  along.  Unfortunately,  govern- 
ments cannot  indulge  in  that  dying-horse  method  of  laying  down  their 
burdens.  Even  had  the  purchase  price  of  almost  three  hundred  dol- 
lars an  acre  included  everything  of  monetary  value  on  the  islands, 
from  the  wardrobes  of  the  inhabitants  to  the  last  peasant's  hut,  we 
should  have  made  a  bad  bargain.  But  about  all  we  got  for  our  twenty- 
five  millions  is  the  right  to  fly  our  flag  over  the  islands,  and  half  a 
dozen  old  forts  and  government  buildings  entirely  stripped  of  their 
furniture.  The  Danish  Government  has  the  reputation  of  being  con- 
servative and  economical.  It  surely  is,  in  more  senses  than  one. 
By  the  terms  of  the  treaty  "  the  movables,  especially  the  silver  plate 
and  the  pictures,  remain  the  property  of  the  Danish  Government  and 
shall,  as  soon  as  circumstances  permit,  be  removed  by  it."  By  virtue 
of  that  clause  they  sold  at  auction  every  stick  of  furniture  in  the  public 
buildings;  they  tore  the  mirrors  off  the  walls;  they  removed  the  gilt 
moldings  from  them;  they  tried  to  tear  off  the  embossed  leathery 
wall-paper,  and  left  the  rooms  looking  as  if  a  party  of  yeggmen  had 
gutted  them ;  they  took  down  and  carried  away  the  rope  on  the  govern- 
ment flagpole!  Economy  is  a  splendid  trait,  but  they  might  have  left 
us  a  chair  in  which  to  mourn  the  loss  of  our  twenty-five  —  and  more 
—  millions. 

Everything  worth  owning  in  the  islands  is  still  in  private,  princi- 
pally Danish,  hands.  When  we  planned  to  erect  a  naval  station  on 
an  utterly  worthless  stony  hill  on  St.  Thomas  harbor,  the  owners  de- 
manded twenty-five  hundred  dollars  an  acre  for  it.  We  must  main- 
tain all  the  grants,  concessions,  and  licenses  left  by  the  Danish  Gov- 


IN  AND  ABOUT  OUR  VIRGIN  ISLANDS  317 

ernment.  "  Det  Vestindiske  Kompagni "  retains  most  of  the  harbor 
privileges ;  another  Danish  company,  of  which  the  principal  share- 
holder is  Prince  Axel,  cousin  of  the  king,  holds  the  coaling  rights,  the 
electric  lighting  rights,  the  right  to  operate  a  dry-dock.  We  cannot 
even  use  American  money  in  our  new  possessions.  The  Danish  West 
Indian  bank  has  the  exclusive  concession  for  issuing  notes  until  1934, 
paying  a  ten  per  cent,  tax  on  profits  to  the  Danish  Government,  and 
the  good  old  greenback  must  be  exchanged  for  the  domestic  shin- 
plasters.  Naval  men  stationed  in  St.  Thomas  are  forced  to  pay  this 
institution  as  high  as  two  per  cent,  discount  on  their  U.  S.  government 
pay  checks;  the  yearly  budget  of  our  new  colony  must  be  made  in 
Danish  francs.  But  though  the  domestic  money  is  officially  in  francs 
and  "  bits,"  the  people  talk  in  dollars  and  cents  as  universally  as  they 
speak  English  instead  of  Danish.  It  is  difficult  to  find  anything  left 
by  the  old  regime  that  is  not  protected  by  that  curiously  one- 
sided treaty.  An  American  remarked  casually  to  an  old  Danish 
resident  one  evening  as  they  were  strolling  through  Emancipation 
Park: 

"  I  think  we  '11  tear  down  that  old  bust  of  King  Christian  IX  and 
put  one  of  Lincoln  in  its  place." 

"  Vat  ?  "  shrieked  the  Dane.  "  You  can't  do  that.  Eet  ees  in  de 
treaty." 

By  some  oversight  the  Danes  failed  to  provide  for  a  few  of  the 
minor  concessions.  There  were  the  apothecaries,  for  instance.  Un- 
der Danish  rule  one  was  given  exclusive  rights  in  each  of  the  three 
towns  and  its  contiguous  territory.  They  were  inspected  often,  old 
drugs  being  thrown  out ;  and  they  were  not  allowed  to  sell  patent  medi- 
cines. Their  prices  are  reasonable  as  monopolies  go,  their  stores  well 
kept,  and  their  stock  ample,  within  Danish  limits.  When  the  islands 
were  sold,  the  apothecaries  complained  to  the  king  that  they  were  in 
danger  of  being  ruined  by  American  competition ;  whereupon  the  king, 
out  of  the  goodness  of  his  heart  —  and  the  fullness  of  the  twenty-five 
million  —  gave  them  $30,000  each.  Four  years  have  passed  since  the 
druggists  pocketed  this  salve  to  their  injured  profits,  and  they  are 
still  doing  business  at  the  old  stands  without  a  rival  in  sight. 

Indeed,  there  is  little  evidence  of  that  influx  of  American  business 
men  which  was  predicted  as  sure  to  follow  the  flag.  So  far  the  only 
one  is  a  young  ex-marine  who  is  breaking  into  the  restaurant  and 
soda-fountain  business.  He  has  been  fought  at  every  step  by  the 


3i8          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

local  merchants.  Living  exclusively  on  trade,  with  hundred  per  cent, 
profits  customary  from  time  immemorial,  the  wealthier  class  of  the 
islanders  have  the  cuteness  of  the  shopkeeper  developed  to  tne  nth 
degree,  and  they  will  not  readily  consent  to  competition  by  rank  out- 
siders from  the  United  States. 

Among  the  things  which  the  Danes  left  behind  were  their  laws,  and 
their  own  judge  to  administer  them.  True,  Judge  Thiele  has  Decome 
an  American  citizen,  but  it  is  a  curious  sight  to  see  Americans-born 
brought  into  court  by  negro  policemen,  to  be  tried  by  a  man  who  is 
still  a  foreigner  in  point  of  view  and  thinking  processes  in  spite  of 
being  no  longer  officially  a  subject  of  the  King  of  Denmark.  There 
are  those  who  claim  he  sides  with  the  favorites  of  the  old  Government 
to  the  decided  disadvantage  of  Americans,  though  there  art  more 
who  speak  well  of  him.  It  is  enough  to  know  that  Americans  are  be- 
ing tried  in  American  territory  under  the  Napoleonic  code,  In  that 
laborious  old-fashioned  style  by  which  the  judge  questions  the  wit« 
nesses,  dictates  their  answers  in  his  own  more  cultured  words  to  a 
clerk,  who  writes  them  all  down  in  laborious  longhand  in  a  great 
ledger,  to  be  sure  that  a  change  should  be  made  in  the  judiciary  system 
of  our  Virgin  Islands. 

Having  bought  them,  and  being  forced  to  support  them  for  the  rest 
of  our  natural  existence,  it  might  be  of  interest  to  make  a  brief  in- 
ventory of  our  new  possessions.  The  total  area  of  the  three  islands, 
with  their  seventeen  keys,  only  three  or  four  of  which  are  inhabited, 
is  about  140  square  miles.  The  census  taken  soon  after  the  raising 
of  the  Stars  and  Stripes  showed  something  over  twenty-six  thousand 
inhabitants,  but  several  signs  indicate  that  these  are  decreasing.  The 
only  real  value  of  the  Virgin  group  proper  is  the  splendid  harbor  of 
St.  Thomas.  St.  Croix,  forty  miles  distant  from  it  is  considerably 
larger  than  all  the  rest  of  this  group  put  together,  more  populous, 
more  fertile,  and  could  easily  be  made  self-supporting  governmentally, 
as  it  always  has  been  privately,  particularly  with  the  introduction  of 
an  extensive  system  of  irrigation. 

A  couple  of  trails  zigzag  up  the  reddish,  dry  hillside  behind  Char- 
lotte Amalie,  scattering  along  the  way  a  few  hovels.  They  really  lead 
nowhere,  however,  for  there  is  no  other  town  than  the  capital  on  the 
island.  The  hurricane  of  1916  blew  down  most  of  the  farm-houses 
and  many  of  the  trees,  and  they  were  never  rebuilt  or  replanted. 
Once  heavily  forested,  later  Nile-green  with  sugar-cane,  St.  Thomas 


IN  AND  ABOUT  OUR  VIRGIN  ISLANDS  319 

is  now  brown,  arid,  and  dreary,  with  scarcely  a  tenth  of  its  acreage 
under  even  half-hearted  cultivation.  Being  all  "  mountain,"  fifteen 
hundred  feet  high  in  one  spot,  with  buttresses  running  down  to  the 
sea  in  every  direction,  it  can  hardly  be  expected  to  compete  with  modern 
agricultural  methods.  Moreover,  eight  of  its  ten  thousand  inhabitants 
have  been  drawn  into  town  by  the  higher  wages  of  harbor  work,  and 
though  there  is  now  a  scarcity  of  that,  they  still  remain,  to  the  detri- 
ment of  what  might  be  moderately  productive  plantations,  forcing  the 
island  to  draw  its  food  from  St.  John,  the  British  Virgins,  or  Porto 
Rico.  A  journey  over  the  "  mountain "  brings  little  reward  except 
some  marvelous  views  and  yet  another  proof  of  how  primitive  the  hu- 
man family  may  become. 

A  so-called  road  traverses  the  island  from  east  to  west.  In  com- 
pany with  a  navy  doctor  I  bumped  by  Ford  along  the  eastern  half  of 
this  to  Water  Bay.  A  cattle-raising  estate  called  "  Tatu,"  with  a 
three-story,  red-roofed  dwelling,  was  the  only  sign  of  industry  along 
the  route.  Near  the  bay  we  overtook  a  man  on  his  way  —  at  nine 
o'clock  in  the  morning  —  to  dig  a  well  for  the  estate  owner,  and  soon 
talked  him  into  rowing  us  across  to  St.  John  instead.  For  the  wind 
was  dead  ahead,  and  the  old  sail  in  the  bottom  of  his  patched  and 
weather-warped  dory  would  have  been  far  more  hindrance  than  help 
in  negotiating  the  stormy  three-mile  passage  between  the  islands.  Once 
landed,  in  Cruz  Bay,  we  rented  St.  John's  only  public  means  of  con- 
veyance,—  two  hard-gaited  horses  named  "  Bess  "  and  "  Candy  Kid  " 
—  and  rode  out  into  the  wilderness. 

St.  John  is  little  more  than  that.  Its  twenty  square  miles  have  al- 
most entirely  gone  back  to  forest,  through  which  a  few  trails  meander 
amid  a  silence  as  unbroken  as  that  of  Robinson  Crusoe's  place  of  ex- 
ile. There  is  not  a, wheeled  vehicle  on  the  island;  one  may  ride  for 
miles  without  meeting  an  inhabitant,  and  the  very  birds  seem  to  have 
abandoned  it  for  more  progressive  climes.  Yet  rusted  iron  kettles  and 
the  ruins  of  stone  sugar-mills,  scattered  here  and  there  in  forest 
and  scrub,  show  that  the  island  was  once  a  place  of  industry.  Sugar 
and  cotton  plantations  almost  completely  covered  it  when,  in  1733,  a 
slave  rebellion  started  it  on  a  decline  that  has  never  since  ceased.  The 
whites  quelled  the  uprising,  after  a  half  hundred  of  them  and  four 
times  as  many  blacks  had  lost  their  lives,  but  the  negroes  won  in  the 
end,  for  the  last  census  showed  but  four  white  men  on  the  island. 
To-day  it  has  barely  eight  hundred  inhabitants,  of  whom,  unlike  the 
other  islands,  the  majority  are  men.  A  few  mangoes  and  bananas, 


320          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

yams,  okre,  and  a  kind  of  tropical  pumpkin  keep  its  hut-dwellers  alive. 
Here  and  there  is  a  little  patch  of  cane,  from  which  rum  was  made 
before  the  Americans  came  to  interfere  with  that ;  limes  are  cultivated 
rather  languidly  in  a  few  hillside  orchards,  and  the  high  ridge  between 
Hope  and  Bordeaux  is  covered  with  bay-trees. 

These  vary  in  size  from  mere  saplings  to  trees  twenty  feet  in  height. 
The  picking  is  best  done  in  June,  when  men  and  boys  break  off  the 
smaller  branches  and  carry  them  to  the  distilleries.  Here  the  leaves 
are  cooked  in  sea  water  in  immense  brass  decanters,  from  which  the 
bay  oil  is  drawn  off,  and  the  leaves  tossed  out,  apparently  unchanged 
except  from  green  to  a  coppery  brown.  One  hundred  and  thirty 
pounds  of  leaves  are  required  to  produce  a  quart  of  oil,  which  sells 
at  present  for  six  dollars,  and  has  long  had  the  reputation  of  being  the 
best  on  the  market.  The  bay-tree  estates  give  occasional  labor  to  the 
inhabitants,  but  their  livelihood  depends  chiefly  on  their  own  little 
patches  of  tropical  vegetables,  their  cattle,  and  their  fishing.  From 
the  high  points  of  the  island  one  has  an  embracing  view  of  the  British 
Virgin  Islands,  separated  from  our  own  by  only  a  few  miles,  and 
framed  in  the  Caribbean  like  emeralds  of  fantastic  shape  in  a  setting  of 
translucent  blue. 

There  are  no  towns  on  St.  John.  The  nearest  semblance  to  them 
are  a  few  scattered  clusters  of  huts  around  the  shores,  where  customs 
are  as  backward  as  those  of  Africa,  or  Haiti.  A  handful  of  these 
simple  dwellings  are  rather  picturesquely  strewn  up  the  steep  fish- 
hook-shaped peninsula  that  forms  the  eastern  end  of  the  island,  con- 
nected to  the  rest  by  a  narrow  neck  of  land.  Between  this  and  what 
might  be  called  the  mainland  is  Coral  Bay,  a  harbor  of  far  greater 
depth  than  that  of  St.  Thomas,  and  so  much  larger  that,  experts  tell 
us,  the  construction  of  two  break-waters  would  make  it  a  safe  an- 
chorage for  the  largest  navy  in  the  world.  But  what,  in  the  name  of 
Neptune,  would  the  world's  largest  navy  find  to  do  there  ? 

We  met  all  the  elite  of  St.  John  at  the  Moravian  mission  of  Emmaus 
at  the  head  of  Coral  Bay.  The  census  showed  the  island  inhabited 
by  one  Catholic,  forty  Lutherans,  and  the  rest  Moravians,  hence  there 
were  few  local  celebrities  missing  at  the  annual  "  show  "  which  hap- 
pened to  coincide  with  our  visit.  Negroes  dressed  in  their  most  solemn 
garments,  the  men  in  staid  black,  the  women  in  starched  white,  poured 
in  on  horseback  and  afoot  from  moonrise  until  the  first  of  the  dole- 
ful religious  songs  and  the  amusingly  stupid  dialogues  began  in  the 
school  chapel.  There  was  the  black  government  doctor,  the  negro 


IN  AND  ABOUT  OUR  VIRGIN  ISLANDS  321 

owners  of  the  two  or  three  farms  so  large  as  to  be  locally  known  as 
"estates,"  the  island's  few  school  teachers  —  its  policeman  himself 
might  have  been  there  had  I  not  deprived  him  of  the  use  of  his 
"  Candy  Kid."  To  tell  the  truth  they  gave  a  rather  good  impression, 
decidedly  a  better  one  than  the  traveler-baiters  of  St.  Thomas.  They 
were  almost  English  in  their  cold  leisurely  deportment,  yet  more  volubly 
courteous,  and  with  few  exceptions  they  frankly  looked  down  upon 
white  men.  Many  of  them  had  the  outward  indices  of  education, 
speaking  with  a  chosen-worded  formality  that  suggested  a  national 
convention  of  pedagogues ;  not  a  hint  of  hilarity  enlivened  their  inter- 
course. Perhaps  the  most  amusing  part  of  all  was  the  overdone  com- 
pany-manner in  which  they  treated  their  wives,  those  same  wives  who 
no  doubt  would  take  up  the  chief  family  burdens  again,  once  the  night 
had  separated  the  gathering  into  its  natural  component  parts. 

We  found  Carl  Francis  more  nearly  what  it  .  >  to  be  hoped  our  new 
wards  can  all  gradually  be  brought  to  resemble.  A  member  r,f  the 
Colonial  Council,  notorious  throughout  the  colo  y  as  the  man  who 
dared  tell  the  congressional  committee  in  public  session  that  the  chief 
trouble  with  the  Virgin  Islands  is  the  laziness  of  their  inhabitants, 
he  would  outrank  many  a  politician  of  our  own  land  in  public  spirit, 
for  all  his  ebony  skin.  He  confirmed  the  famous  statement  above 
mentioned,  but  added  that  there  were  other  things  which  St.  John 
needed  for  its  advancement.  It  needs  a  mail  service,  for  instance,  such 
as  it  had  under  the  Danes,  instead  of  being  obliged  to  go  to  Charlotte 
Amalie  to  post  or  receive  its  letters.  It  needs  more  schools,  so  that  its 
children  shall  not  have  to  walk  miles  over  the  mountains  morning  and 
evening.  It  must  have  something  in  the  nature  of  an  agricultural 
bank  to  lend  the  inhabitants  wherewithal  to  replant  the  old  estates, 
if  St.  John  is  to  regain  under  the  American  flag  something  of  its 
eighteenth  century  prosperity. 

If  the  Virginia  was  unworthy  of  her  calling,  what  shall  I  say  of  the 
Creole,  which  carried  me  from  St.  Thomas  to  St.  Croix?  A  battered 
old  sloop  of  a  type  so  ancient  that  her  massive  wooden  rail  resembled 
that  of  a  colonial  veranda,  barely  fifty  feet  long,  and  nearly  as  wide, 
her  bottom  so  covered  with  barnacles  that  she  did  little  more  than 
creep  in  the  strongest  breeze,  she  represented  the  last  stage  in  ocean- 
going traffic.  Not  only  were  there  no  other  whites  on  board,  but  not 
even  a  mulatto.  The  passenger-list  was  made  up  chiefly  of  a  batch 
of  criminals  and  insane  who  were  being  sent  to  their  respective  insti- 


322          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

tutions  in  St.  Croix.  Most  of  them  wore  handcuffs  and  leg-irons, 
and  the  rattle  of  chains  and  the  shrieks  of  their  wearers  suggested 
the  slave-ships  of  olden  days.  One  of  the  mad  women  screamed  for 
unbroken  hours  in  the  lingo  of  the  Dutch  West  Indies;  another  con- 
ducted single-handed  an  entire  church  service,  hymns,  sermon,  pray- 
ers, and  all. 

Yet  the  crew  were  at  least  grown  men,  and  if  they  were  monkey- 
like  in  their  playful  moods,  they  had  real  discipline  and  a  sense  of  re- 
sponsibility when  the  time  came  for  it  that  was  a  welcome  contrast 
to  the  surly  indifference  with  which  the  boys  on  the  Virginia  carried 
out  their  orders.  The  captain  was  a  black  man  of  the  coast  fisherman 
type,  but  the  most  entertaining  part  of  the  voyage  was  the  unfailing 
"  sir  "  with  which  the  mate,  a  cadaverous  old  negro  who  wore  a  heavy 
wool  skating-cap  and  i  sort  of  trench-coat  fit  for  the  Arctic  even  at 
high  noon,  ended  his  <  areful  repetition  of  the  skipper's  every  command. 
Moreover, —  for  we  are  all  apt  to  judge  things  from  our  own  petty 
personal-comfort  avgle  —  the  captain  and  most  of  his  men  treated  a 
white  man  as  if  b< ;  were  of  royal  blood.  Not  only  did  he  find  me  a 
canvas  steamer-chair,  but  he  refused  any  of  the  other  passengers  ad- 
mittance to  the  three-berth  cabin,  lest  they  should  "  disturb  de  gen'le- 
man."  If  only  he  had  been  able  to  adjourn  the  church  service  and 
the  other  uproar  beyond  the  bulkhead,  I  might  have  had  a  real  night's 
sleep. 

We  left  at  five  in  the  evening,  and  by  sunrise  had  covered  the  forty 
miles, —  though  not,  unfortunately,  in  the  right  direction.  Had  our 
destination  been  Fredriksted  at  the  west  end  of  the  island,  we  should 
have  landed  early.  But  the  Creole's  contract  calls  for  a  service  be- 
tween St.  Thomas  and  Christiansted,  the  two  capitals  of  our  Virgin 
group,  and  all  day  long  we  wallowed  eastward  under  the  lee  of  St. 
Croix's  mountainous  northern  coast,  while  "  de  lepards,"  as  the  sane 
passengers  called  their  unsound  sisters  below,  shrieked  their  maudlin 
complaints  and  the  church  service  began  over  and  over  again  with  a 
"  Brethren,  let  us  pray  for  her." 

Christiansted  is  prettily  situated  amid  cocoanut-palms  and  sloping 
cane-fields  at  the  back  of  a  wide  bay,  but  a  long  reef  with  an  exceed- 
ingly narrow  entrance  gives  it  a  poor  harbor.  Its  white  or  cream- 
colored  houses,  with  here  and  there  a  red  roof,  lend  it  a  touch  that  is 
lacking  in  the  half-dozen  rather  grim-faced  villages  and  estates  that 
may  be  seen  scattered  to  right  and  left  along  the  rugged  coast.  The 
town  has  wide,  rather  well-kept  streets,  many  stone  houses,  an  impos- 


IN  AND  ABOUT  OUR  VIRGIN  ISLANDS  323 

ing  government  building,  and  climbs  away  up  the  stony  slope  behind 
as  if  it  had  once  planned  to  grow,  but  had  changed  its  mind.  Old- 
fashioned  chain  pumps  supply  it  with  water,  from  wells  rather  than 
from  cisterns;  a  big  Catholic  church  is  barely  outrivaled  in  size  by 
the  Anglican;  on  the  whole,  it  seems  better  swept  than  more  populous 
Charlotte  Amalie.  Its  people  are  simple-mannered,  rather  "  gawky," 
in  fact,  with  a  tendency  to  stare  strangers  out  of  countenance,  and  have 
a  leisureliness  that  shows  even  in  the  long-drawn  "  Good  ahftehnoon, 
sar,"  with  which  they  greet  passers-by. 

Christiansted,  and  all  St.  Croix,  has  a  special  grievance  against  the 
Americans.  Under  the  Danes  the  governor  spent  half  the  year  in 
this  second  capital.  Now  the  ruler  of  the  islands  only  occasionally  runs 
over  from  St.  Thomas  in  his  private  yacht,  often  returning  the  same 
day,  and  the  Croixians  feel  slighted.  When  the  admiral  and  his  aides 
land,  it  is  mildly  like  the  arrival  of  royalty.  A  band  or  two  and  most 
of  the  population  are  drawn  up  in  the  sanded  space  facing  the  wharf, 
whence  all  proceed  to  a  meeting  of  the  Colonial  Council  in  the  old 
government  building. 

Across  the  street  from  this  is  a  shop  in  which  Alexander  Hamilton 
once  clerked.  His  mother,  born  in  St.  Croix,  married  a  man  named 
Levine,  who  abused  her,  whereupon  she  went  to  live  with  a  Scotchman 
named  Hamilton  in  the  neighboring  British  island  of  Nevis.  There 
Alexander  was  born,  but  when  his  father  went  to  seek  his  fortune  else- 
where, the  mother  returned  to  her  native  island.  While  clerking  in 
the  Christiansted  shop,  the  son  wrote  his  father  a  letter  describing  a 
hurricane  that  had  swept  St.  Croix,  the  father  showed  it  to  influential 
friends,  with  the  result  that  Alexander  was  sent  to  King's  College 
(now  Columbia  University),  and,  thanks  partly  to  Aaron  Burr,  never 
returned  to  the  West  Indies.  Meanwhile  his  mother  remained  in  St. 
Croix  until  her  death,  and  was  buried  on  a  knoll  a  few  miles  west  of 
Christiansted.  It  is  a  pleasant  burial  place,  with  constant  shade  and 
a  never-failing  trade  wind  fanning  the  flowers  above  it,  a  quaint  old 
homestead  behind  it,  and  a  modern  monument  erected  by  an  American 
woman,  inscribed : 

Rachael  Fawcett  Levine 

1736-1768 
She  was  the  Mother  of  Alexander  Hamilton 

St.  Croix  is  far  more  of  a  real  country  than  all  the  other  islands 
of  the  group  put  together.  Not  only  is  it  much  larger,  being  twenty 


324  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

miles  long  and  five  wide,  but  is  much  more  extensively  cultivated. 
Three  splendid  roads  run  nearly  the  length  of  the  island,  with  numer- 
ous cross  roads  in  good  condition.  Only  the  rocky  eastern  end  is  a 
wilderness  to  which  deer,  brought  into  St.  Croix  by  the  British  when 
they  controlled  it  during  the  Napoleonic  wars,  go  to  hide  after  the 
cane-fields  are  cut,  such  a  wilderness  that  hunters  rarely  succeed  in 
stalking  the  wary  animals  in  the  dense  undergrowth.  There  are  far 
more  signs  of  industry  in  St.  Croix  than  in  St.  Thomas ;  its  estate- 
owners  are  on  the  whole  an  intelligent,  progressive  class,  with  a  social 
life  quite  different  from  that  on  the  more  primitive  islands.  When 
one  has  seen  St.  Croix,  the  twenty-five  million  does  not  seem  quite  so 
complete  and  irreparable  a  loss. 

I  took  the  "  King's  Road  "  through  the  middle  of  the  island.  It 
runs  for  fourteen  miles,  from  Christiansted,  the  capital,  to  Frederik- 
sted,  its  rival.  These  names  being  too  much  effort  for  the  negro 
tongue,  the  towns  are  known  locally  as  "  Boss  End  "  (either  a  cor- 
ruption of  the  French  Bassin  or  an  acknowledgement  that  the  "  bosses  " 
of  the  island  always  lived  in  the  capital)  and  "  West  End."  The 
northern  side  is  abrupt,  with  deep  water  close  to  the  shore,  its  high- 
est peak,  Mount  Eagle,  rising  1-180  feet.  South  of  this  range  are 
undulating,  fertile  valleys  and  broad,  rolling  plains  not  even  suggested 
along  the  northern  coast,  and  the  land  slopes  away  in  shoals  and  coral 
ledges  for  several  miles  from  the  beach.  The  highways  are  main- 
tained by  the  owners  of  the  estates  through  which  they  run;  there- 
fore they  follow  a  somewhat  roundabout  course  through  the  cane- 
fields,  that  the  expense  of  maintenance  may  be  more  evenly  divided. 
They  are  busy  roads,  dotted  with  automobiles,  of  which  there  are 
more  than  one  hundred  on  the  island,  many  donkeys,  heavy  two- 
wheeled  carts  hauled  by  neck-yoked  oxen,  a  kind  of  jaunting  car  of 
the  conservative  gentry,  and  inumerable  black  pedestrians.  The  is- 
land is  everywhere  punctuated  with  picturesque  old  stone  windmill 
towers  that  once  ground  cane,  their  flailing  arms  long  since  departed, 
and  gray  old  chimneys  of  abandoned  sugar-mills  break  the  sky-line  on 
every  hand.  Some  of  these  dull-white  heaps  of  buildings  on  their  hill- 
tops look  like  aged  Norman  castles ;  there  is  something  grim  and  north- 
ern about  them  that  does  not  fit  at  all  with  the  tropics.  They  suggest 
instead  the  diligence  and  foresightedness  of  the  temperate  zone.  Old 
human  tread-mills  may  still  be  found  among  them,  and  slave-house  vil- 
lages that  in  some  cases  are  inhabited  by  the  laborers  of  to-day.  Rusted 


IN  AND  ABOUT  OUR  VIRGIN  ISLANDS  325 

sugar-kettles,  such  as  are  strewn  through  the  West  Indies  from  eastern 
Haiti  to  southern  Trinidad,  lie  abandoned  here  and  there  throughout 
the  island. 

Sugar-cane  once  covered  even  the  tops  of  the  hills,  but  to-day  only 
the  flatter  lands  are  planted,  though  there  are  splendid  stretches  of 
cane-green  valleys.  The  names  of  estates  are  amusing,  and  range 
all  the  way  from  cynicism  to  youthful  hopefulness, — "  Golden  Grove," 
"Work  and  Rest,"  "Hope  and  Blessing,"  "Whim,"  "Slob,"  "Ju- 
dith's Fancy,"  "Barren  Spot,"  "Adventure."  The  ceiba,  or  "silk- 
cotton  tree,"  beautiful  specimens  of  the  royal  palm,  the  tibet-tree,  full 
of  rustling  pods  that  give  it  the  name  of  "  women's-tongues  "  in  all 
the  English-speaking  West  Indies,  everywhere  beautify  the  landscape. 
Ruins  of  the  slave  rebellion,  of  the  earthquake  of  1848,  of  the  dis- 
astrous hurricane  of  1916,  are  still  to  be  found  here  and  there.  There 
is  a  marvelous  view  from  King's  Hill,  with  its  old  Danish  gendarmerie, 
now  a  police  station,  from  which  the  central  highway,  lined  by  palms 
and  undulating  through  great  valleys  of  cane,  may  be  seen  to  where  it 
descends  to  "  West  End  "  and  the  Caribbean.  In  the  center  of  the 
picture  sits  Bethlehem,  the  largest  sugar-mill  on  the  island,  with  its 
cane  railway  and  up-to-date  methods.  For  the  modern  process  of 
centralization  is  already  spreading  in  St.  Croix ;  the  small  independent 
mills  are  disappearing,  and  with  them  much  of  the  picturesquesness  of 
the  island.  These  big  mills,  as  well  as  most  of  the  small,  are  owned 
by  Danes,  half  the  stock  of  the  largest  being  held  by  the  Danish  gov- 
ernment. Unfortunately  St.  Croix  has  put  all  its  eggs  in  one  basket, 
or  at  most,  two,  sugar  and  sea-island  cotton. 

There  is  not  a  thatched  roof  on  the  island.  The  people  live  in 
moderate  comfort,  as  comfort  goes  in  the  West  Indies.  Toward  sun- 
set the  roads  are  lined  with  women  cane-cutters  in  knee-length  skirts, 
with  footless  woolen  stockings  that  suggest  the  tights  of  ballet-dancers, 
to  protect  their  legs  in  the  fields,  pattering  homeward,  with  their  big 
cane-knives  lying  flat  on  the  tops  of  their  heads.  Bits  of  colored  rags 
sewed  on  the  hatbands  of  the  men  indicate  that  they  are  members  of 
the  newly  organized  labor-union.  They  still  bow  and  raise  their  hats 
to  passing  white  men,  yet  one  feels  something  of  that  bolshevistic  at- 
mosphere which  their  black  leaders  are  fostering  among  them.  The 
King's  Road  passes  a  large  distillery,  which  prohibition  has  closed. 
Formerly  St.  Croix  made  much  rum ;  now  it  is  giving  its  attention 
rather  to  syrup  than  to  sugar,  as  there  is  more  money  in  the  former ; 
but  estate-owners  are  threatening  to  give  up  cane-growing  and  turn 


326          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

their  fields  into  cattle  pastures,  so  greatly  have  the  wages  of  field  la- 
borers increased  in  the  last  two  years  —  from  twenty-five  cents  to  a 
dollar  a  day.  For  St.  Croix  is  one  of  the  few  islands  in  the  West 
Indies  where  "  task  work  "  has  never  taken  the  place  of  a  fixed  daily 
wage.  Cattle  are  plentiful  on  the  island,  from  which  they  are  sent  to 
Porto  Rico  in  tug-towed  open  barges.  Some  of  them  are  so  wild  that 
they  are  brought  down  to  the  coast  in  cages  on  wheels,  and  all  of  them 
are  roped  and  swung  on  board  with  little  regard  to  their  bodily  com- 
fort. 

Fredriksted,  the  third  and  last  town  of  our  Virgin  Islands,  is  a 
quaint,  "  Dutchy  "  place  some  five  blocks  wide  and  seven  long,  with 
wide  sanded  streets,  two-storied  for  the  most  part  and  boasting  no  real 
public  sidewalks;  for  though  what  look  like  them  run  beneath  the 
arcades  that  uphold  the  upper-story  verandas,  they  are  rather  family 
porches,  shut  off  by  stairways  or  barricades,  which  force  the  pedestrian 
to  take  constantly  to  the  sun-scorched  streets.  The  town  has  only  an 
open  roadstead;  indeed,  there  is  not  a  good  harbor  in  the  island.  A 
native  band  recruited  by  the  American  navy  breaks  the  monotony  of 
life  by  playing  here  once  a  week,  as  it  does  daily  in  Christiansted. 
The  cable  company  is  required  by  law  to  furnish  the  world's  news  to 
the  press,  but  as  the  pathetic  little  newspapers  are  so  small  that  they 
can  publish  only  a  few  items  at  a  time,  the  despatches  are  habitually 
some  two  weeks  old,  each  taking  its  chronological  turn  irrespective  of 
importance. 

I  visited  several  schools  in  the  Virgin  Islands.  When  an  American 
school  director  arrived  early  in  1918  he  found  no  records  either  of 
schools,  pupils,  or  parents.  By  dint  of  going  out  and  hunting  them  up, 
he  discovered  nineteen  educational  buildings  on  the  three  islands. 
Ninety  per  cent,  of  the  population  can  read  and  write  after  a  fashion, 
but  the  majority  usually  have  their  letters  written  by  the  public  scribe, 
of  whom  there  is  one  in  each  of  the  three  towns,  in  a  set  form  that 
gives  all  epistles  a  strong  family  resemblance.  The  school  system 
was  honeycombed  with  all  sorts  of  petty  graft.  A  man  who  received 
three  dollars  a  month  for  keeping  a  certain  school  clean  had  not  seen 
the  building  in  years.  The  town  clock  of  Christiansted  has  not  run  for 
five  years,  yet  another  favored  person  received  a  monthly  stipend 
for  keeping  it  in  order.  The  new  director  and  his  two  American 
assistants  have  still  to  contend  with  many  difficulties.  There  are 


32? 

no  white  teachers;  those  now  employed  were  trained  either  in  Den- 
mark or  in  the  Moravian  schools,  and  the  "  English "  of  most  of 
them  almost  deserves  to  be  ranked  as  an  independent  dialect.  The 
highest  teacher's  salary  is  seventy-five,  the  average  twenty-four  dol- 
lars a  month.  Boys  of  sixteen,  drawing  the  regal  income  of  ten  dol- 
lars monthly,  conduct  many  of  the  classes.  Those  who  served  a  cer- 
tain number  of  years  under  the  Danes  receive  a  pension  from  the 
famous  twenty-five  millions.  They  are  small  pensions,  like  those  that 
went  to  all  the  small  government  employees  whom  the  Danes  left 
behind,  and  those  who  still  hold  their  places  protest  against  telling 
their  new  employer  how  much  they  draw  from  Copenhagen,  fancying 
it  may  result  in  a  corresponding  loss  in  the  increase  they  fondly  hope 
for  under  American  rule.  Lack  of  funds  has  forced  the  director  to 
maintain  many  of  the  incompetents  in  office.  One  rural  school  we 
visited  is  still  taught  by  the  local  butcher,  whose  inefficiency  is  on  a 
par  with  his  custom  of  neglecting  his  educational  duties  for  his  more 
natural  calling.  But  as  the  island  budget  does  not  permit  an  increase 
of  his  monthly  thirty-five  dollars, —  and  in  every  case  it  is  merely 
Danish,  not  American,  dollars, —  no  more  competent  substitute  has  yet 
appeared  to  claim  the  butcher's  ferule. 

The  country  schools  have  few  desks;  the  children  sit  on  backless 
benches,  their  feet  usually  high  off  the  floor.  The  tops  of  the  desks 
are  in  many  cases  painted  black  and  used  as  blackboards.  A  rusty  tin 
cup  was  found  doing  service  for  all  the  thirsty;  when  the  Americans 
attempted  to  improve  this  condition  by  introducing  a  long-handled 
dipper  with  an  edge  cut  in  repeated  V  shape,  the  teachers  bent  the 
sharp  points  back  and  returned  to  the  old  dip-your-hand-in  method. 
Lessons  are  often  done  on  slates  or  pieces  of  slate,  which  the  teacher 
periodically  sprinkles  with  water  from  a  bay-rum  bottle,  then  requires 
the  sums  to  be  erased  in  rhythmical  unison.  Formerly  the  teachers  sat 
in  the  middle  of  one  large  room,  surrounded  by  eight  different  grades, 
and  the  resultant  hubbub  may  be  imagined.  The  Americans  put  in 
partitions,  and  the  uproar  is  now  somewhat  less  incoherent.  In  some 
of  the  larger  schools  there  were  half-height  partitions,  with  little 
sliding-doors,  through  which  the  principal  could  peer  without  leaving 
his  central  "  office."  Loud  protests  have  been  heard  because  the 
Americans  nailed  these  up,  forcing  upon  the  sedentary  gentlemen  in 
charge  the  exertion  of  walking  around  to  the  several  doors.  The 
teaching  methods  were,  and  in  many  cases  still  are,  of  that  tropically 


328          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

medieval  type  in  which  the  instructor  asks  long  questions  that  require 
a  single-word  answer,  even  that  being  chiefly  suggested  by  the  ques- 
tioner. 

"What  is  the  longest  river  in  America?  Now,  then,  Miss-Mis- 
sissi  — " 

The  answer  "  pi ! "  by  some  unusually  bright  pupil,  is  followed  by 
exclamations  of  praise  from  the  teacher.  Like  most  negroes,  the 
Virgin  Islanders  have  tolerable  memories,  but  little  ability  to  apply 
what  they  learn.  Not  the  least  of  the  difficulties  confronting  the  new 
director  was  the  refopm  of  the  Catholic  schools,  which  had  long  put 
great  emphasis  on  matters  of  religion  and  treated  other  subjects  with 
scant  attention.  The  attempt  to  better  matters  sent  shrieks  of  protest 
to  Washington,  whence  the  director's  hands  were  more  or  less  tied  by 
misinformed  coreligionists.  Bit  by  bit  the  Virgin  Island  schools  are 
being  improved,  however,  a  decree  permitting  superintendents  to  fine 
the  parents  of  pupils  absent  without  due  cause,  simply  by  sending  a 
policeman  to  collect  the  sum  assessed,  without  any  troublesome  process 
of  law,  having  given  a  badly  needed  weapon  against  the  once  wide- 
spread inattendance.  Parents  who  decline,  or  are  unable  to  pay  the 
fines,  are  required  to  work  one  day  on  the  roads  for  every  dollar  un- 
paid. 

There  is  no  agriculture  worth  mentioning  in  St.  Thomas  and  no 
employing  class  in  St.  John,  hence  labor  troubles  have  been  chiefly 
confined  to  St.  Croix.  The  present  leaders  of  the  movement  in  the 
larger  island  are  three  negroes,  all  of  them  agitators  of  the  more  or 
less  violent  type,  differing  only  in  degree,  and  all  more  or  less  con- 
sciously doing  their  best  to  stir  up  those  of  their  own  color.  The 
one  considered  the  most  radical  is  the  least  troublesome,  as  he  can 
readily  be  bought  off.  Another,  a  man  of  some  education,  runs  a 
newspaper  advocating  civil  government, —  that  is,  negro  government, 
—  preaching  that  the  white  man  is  the  enemy  of  the  black,  that  St. 
Croix  belongs  by  right  to  the  latter,  and  openly  accusing  the  white 
officials  of  incompetency  and  dishonesty.  In  addition  to  this,  he  pub- 
lishes secretly  a  scurrilous  sheet  that  is  doing  much  to  inflame  the  primi- 
tive minds  of  the  masses.  The  third  announced  in  a  public  meeting 
that  "  if  the  governor  don't  do  what  we  want,  we  '11  take  him  out  in 
the  bay  and  send  him  back  where  he  come  from." 

"  Since  the  Americans  came,  it  is  all  for  the  niggers,"  said  an  old 
English  estate-owner.  "  The  niggers  even  steal  our  fruit  and  vege- 
tables, carrying  them  to  town  a  bit  at  a  time  in  their  clothes,  for  the 


IN  AND  ABOUT  OUR  VIRGIN  ISLANDS  329 

policemen  are  all  friendly  or  related  to  them.  Let  those  black  agitators 
go  on  a  bit  longer,  and  we  whites  will  have  to  leave  the  island." 

There  are  signs  that  the  whites  are  in  peril  of  losing  the  upper  hand 
in  the  island,  particularly  with  the  methods  of  the  present  governor, 
who  caters  to  the  negroes  with  un-American  eagerness.  As  an  ex- 
ample, though  his  private  yacht  may  be  on  the  point  of  steaming  from 
St.  Thomas  to  St.  Croix  or  vice  versa,  even  American  white  women 
are  left  to  the  mercies  of  the  filthy  Creole,  lest  the  local  merchants  com- 
plain that  trade  is  being  taken  away  from  them.  Yet  native  negro 
girls  are  readily  carried  back  and  forth,  because  they  happen  to  be 
the  daughters,  relatives,  or  dependents  of  members  of  the  colonial 
council,  or  of  some  other  local  officials  of  the  islands  we  are  paying 
taxes  to  support. 

The  negro  newspaper  man  sees  much  "  social  injustice  "  in  St.  Croix, 
of  which  certainly  a  customary  amount  exists ;  but  he  seems  incapable 
of  noting  the  great  disinclination  to  work  and  the  fact  that  the  "  paltry 
dollar  a  day  "  buys  scarcely  one  tenth  the  amount  of  labor  which  con- 
stitutes a  day's  work  in  the  white  man's  countries  with  which  he  strives 
to  compare  his  own.  In  1916  he  went  to  Denmark  and  raised  funds 
to  establish  several  labor-union  estates  on  the  island,  where  the  negroes 
might  raise  cattle,  cane,  and  the  like,  each  to  get  permanent  possession 
of  the  piece  of  land  on  which  he  was  working  as  soon  as  he  had  paid 
off  the  mortgage.  But  the  farms  are  already,  after  a  bare  two  years 
in  the  hands  of  the  union,  largely  over-grown  with  weeds,  bush,  and 
miserable  shacks,  and  about  the  only  result  of  the  move  has  been 
the  loss  of  more  land  to  world  production,  and  the  infliction  of  the 
sponsor  with  an  exaggerated  self-importance  that  has  made  him  lose 
the  one  virtue  of  the  Virgin-Islander  —  his  courtesy. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  employing  class  is  by  no  means  immune  to 
criticism.  The  larger  sugar  companies  were  paying  cane-growers  from 
six  to  seven  cents  Danish  for  sugar  at  the  same  time  that  they  were 
selling  it  for  from  twelve  to  fourteen  cents  in  American  money.  The 
diligent  Yankee  who  controls  the  lighterage,  wharfage,  and  many  other 
monopolies  at  "  West  End,"  as  well  as  sharing  with  the  newspaper 
man  the  political  control  of  the  island,  cannot  be  acquitted  of  the  native 
charge  of  exorbitance.  A  Danish  company  whose  profits  in  1919  were 
more  than  a  million  sent  all  its  gains  to  Copenhagen,  instead  of  helping 
to  stabilize  the  exchange  by  depositing  them  in  New  York. 

Among  the  troubles  of  St.  Croix  is  the  problem  of  what  to  do  with 
the  "  immigration  fund."  Sugar  production  requires  much  labor ;  ever 


330          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

since  slavery  was  abolished  St.  Croix  has  been  constantly  faced  with  the 
difficulty  of  getting  enough  of  it.  A  large  percentage  of  the  negroes 
would  rather  become  public  charges  than  work  more  than  a  few  days 
a  week.  In  1854  the  planters  voluntarily  assessed  themselves  ten  cents 
an  acre  to  establish  an  immigration  fund,  the  Government  making  up 
the  deficit.  Laborers  were  brought  from  the  other  West  Indian  islands, 
particularly  from  Barbados.  Therein  lies  another  grievance  of  the 
planters,  who  assert  that  though  Barbados  implored  the  Government  of 
St.  Croix  to  relieve  the  former  island  of  some  of  its  over-population, 
when  the  request  was  granted,  the  Barbadian  authorities  emptied  the 
jails  and  sent  out  all  their  riff-raff.  With  the  establishment  of  Ameri- 
can rule,  it  became  illegal  to  bring  in  contract  labor,  and  though  the 
immigration  fund  now  consists  of  more  than  seventy  thousand  dollars, 
it  is  impossible  to  use  it  as  originally  intended.  Does  the  money  belong 
to  the  planters,  to  the  United  States,  or  to  the  Danish  Government? 
The  Croixians  are  still  heatedly  debating  the  question,  and  at  the  same 
time  are  complaining  of  the  scarcity  and  high  price  of  willing  labor. 

Politically,  St.  Thomas  and  St.  John,  with  their  numerous  neighbor- 
ing keys  and  islets,  constitute  one  municipality,  and  St.  Croix  another. 
Under  the  Danes  the  executive  power  was  vested  in  a  colonial  governor 
appointed  by  the  crown ;  the  legislative  authority  being  held  by  a 
colonial  council  in  each  municipality,  some  of  the  members  likewise 
crown  appointments,  some  elected.  With  an  American  admiral  as 
governor,  and  naval  officers  as  secretaries  and  heads  of  departments, 
this  system  has  continued,  and  will  continue  until  our  busy  Congress 
finds  time  to  establish  another  form  of  government.  Though  the  navy 
men  explain  to  them  that  they  are  virtually  under  a  civil  government 
without  the  necessity  of  supporting  it  themselves,  the  natives  are  not 
satisfied.  Among  other  things  the  labor  leader  elected  to  the  colonial 
council  of  St.  Croix  demands  the  jury  trial  and  "  suffrage  based  on 
manhood."  The  vote  is  at  present  extended  to  males  over  twenty-five 
having  a  personal  income  of  three  hundred  dollars  a  year  or  owning 
property  yielding  five  dollars  a  month.  Moreover  —  and  this,  I  be- 
lieve, is  more  than  we  demand  even  in  the  United  States  —  the  voters 
must  be  of  "  unblemished  character."  Thus  the  Danes  sought  to  insure 
the  ballot  only  to  men  of  responsibility  and  there  was  good  reason  for 
the  limitation.  To  the  casual  observer  it  seems  that  the  growing 
tendency  to  give  the  natives  the  universal  franchise  should  be  combated, 
unless  the  islands  are  to  become  Haitian. 


IN  AND  ABOUT  OUR  VIRGIN  ISLANDS  331 

Last  year  one  of  the  agitators  went  to  the  United  States  on  the  hope- 
ful mission  of  getting  all  the  offices  filled  by  natives  —  that  is,  negroes. 
Luckily,  his  demands  were  not  granted.  Civil  service  already  applies ; 
there  is  nothing  to  prevent  a  native  from  holding  any  but  the  higher 
offices  if  he  is  fitted  for  the  task;  but  native  ability  is  not  yet  high 
enough,  nor  insular  morals  stanch  enough,  to  give  any  hope  that  a  native 
government  would  work  efficiently  without  white  supervision. 

There  is  more  justice  in  the  plea  for  a  homestead  act  that  will  turn 
the  uncultivated  land  over  to  the  people,  though  even  that  should 
be  framed  with  care.  One  of  the  chief  troubles  with  nearly  all  the 
West  Indies  is  the  ease  with  which  lazy  negroes  may  squat  on  public 
land.  The  islanders  have  one  real  kick,  however,  on  the  state  of  their 
postal  service.  Under  the  Danes  there  were  mail-carriers  in  the  towns, 
there  were  country  post-offices,  and  a  certain  amount  of  rural  delivery ; 
all  school-teachers  sold  stamps,  and  mail  was  sent  by  any  safe  convey- 
ance that  appeared.  To-day  there  are  only  three  post-offices  and  no 
mail  delivery,  the  country  people  must  carry  their  own  letters  to  and 
from  one  of  the  three  towns,  those  living  on  St.  John  being  obliged  to 
bring  and  fetch  theirs  from  Charlotte  Amalie,  and  though  a  dozen 
steamers  may  make  the  crossing  during  the  week,  the  mails  must  wait 
for  the  languid  and  uncertain  Virginia  or  Creole.  There  are  only  four 
postal  employees  in  St.  Thomas,  in  addition  to  the  postmaster,  a  de- 
serving Democrat  from  Virginia  who,  in  the  local  parlance,  "  does  noth- 
ing but  play  tennis  and  crank  a  motor-boat."  When  one  of  the  mail- 
schooners  comes  in,  the  population  crowds  into  the  post-office  in  quest 
of  its  mail,  disrupting  the  service,  each  hopeful  citizen  coming  back 
again  every  half-hour  or  so  until  he  finds  that  the  expected  letter  has 
not  come.  Yet  carriers  were  paid  only  thirty-five  dollars  Danish  under 
the  Danes,  and  three  or  four  of  them  obviated  all  this  chaotic  confusion. 

Roughly  speaking,  the  St.  Thomas  division  does  not  want  civil  gov- 
ernment, feeling  it  cannot  pay  for  it,  and  St.  Croix  does,  though  her 
colonial  council  has  asked  that  no  change  be  made  for  the  present  and 
has  implied  that  it  expects  the  expense  of  government  to  be  chiefly 
maintained  by  congressional  appropriation  even  after  the  change  is 
made.  But  this  same  body  demands  full  jurisdiction  over  all  taxation, 
the  one  thing  it  is  least  competent  to  handle  properly,  for  it  would 
result  in  the  powerful  and  influential  and  their  friends  escaping  their 
just  share  of  the  burden.  There  are  queer  quirks  in  the  taxation  system 
left  by  the  Danes.  Buildings,  for  instance,  are  taxed  by  the  ell,  or  two 
square  feet,  with  the  result  that  old  tumble-downs  often  pay  more  than 


332          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

smaller  modern  and  useful  structures.  There  is  a  tax  on  wheels,  so 
that  the  largest  automobile  pays  five  dollars  a  year,  as  does  the  poor 
man's  donkey-cart.  Moreover,  this  money  does  not  go  to  the  main- 
tenance of  roads,  but  into  the  colonial  treasury,  as  does  every  other 
cent  of  revenue.  Under  the  Danes,  even  with  lottery  taxes  yielding  a 
hundred  thousand  dollars  a  year,  and  a  large  income  from  liquor  taxes, 
the  islands  were  never  self-supporting.  Our  income  tax  in  place  of 
these  amounts  to  little,  especially  as  many  find  ways  to  get  out  of  paying 
it.  The  public  revenues  of  the  islands  are  barely  a  quarter  million  a 
year.  We  contribute  an  equal  amount  directly,  and  three  hundred 
thousand  dollars  a  year  in  navy  salaries  besides,  for  the  governor  and 
his  assistants  get  no  other  recompense  than  their  regular  pay  as  naval 
officers.  There  are  a  few  persons,  not  Virgin-Islanders  of  course, 
who  advocate  annexing  the  group  to  Porto  Rico.  Theoretically,  this 
plan  would  greatly  simplify  matters ;  in  practice  there  would  be  certain 
decided  objections  to  it,  though  the  scheme  might  be  feasible  if  worked 
out  with  care.  Two  things  are  indispensable,  however,  that  during 
the  life  of  the  present  generation  the  islands  be  given  no  more  autonomy 
than  they  have  at  present,  and  above  all  that  they  be  taxed  by  dis- 
interested outsiders. 

A  new  code  of  laws,  based  on  those  of  Alaska  and  reputed  to  con- 
tain all  the  latest  improvements'in  government,  has  recently  been  drawn 
up  for  the  Virgin  Islands.  Unfortunately,  the  colonial  council  can 
reject  that  code  if  they  see  fit;  that  is  another  weakness  in  the  treaty. 
Already  they  have  marked  for  the  pruning-knife  every  clause  designed 
to  improve  the  insular  morals.  The  marriage  ceremony,  for  instance, 
has  never  been  taken  very  seriously  by  the  natives.  Unions  by  mutual 
consent  are  so  numerous  that  our  census-takers  were  forced  to  include 
i.  fifth  class  in  their  returns  —  the  "  consentually  married."  Illegiti- 
macy runs  close  to  eighty  per  cent.,  far  out-distancing  even  Porto  Rico. 
In  fact,  the  mass  of  the  islanders  have  no  morality  whatever  in  that 
particular  matter.  Girls  of  fourteen  not  only  have  children,  but  boast 
of  it.  The  Danes  are  largely  to  blame  for  this  state  of  affairs,  for 
there  were  few  of  them  who  did  not  leave  "  gutter  children  "  behind, 
though  it  must  be  admitted  that  our  own  marines  and  sailors  are  not 
setting  a  much  better  example.  The  negro,  being  imitative,  is  particu- 
larly quick  to  copy  any  easy-going  ways  of  his  superiors ;  hence  there 
is  almost  a  complete  absence  of  public  sentiment  against  such  unions 
among  the  blacks.  Formerly  a  special  excuse  was  found  in  the  high 
cost  of  leeal  and  church  marriages,  the  fees  for  which  were  virtual!} 


IN  AND  ABOUT  OUR  VIRGIN  ISLANDS  333 

prohibitive  to  the  poorer  classes.  To-day  they  are  only  nominal,  and 
many  an  old  couple  has  been  married  in  the  presence  of  their  grand- 
children. The  Danish  laws  compel  the  father  to  contribute  two  dollars 
a  month  to  the  support  of  his  illegal  children,  but  though  the  man 
seldom  denies  his  possible  parentage,  the  woman  has  frequently  no 
unquestionable  proof  of  it.  The  new  code  would  force  men  to  marry 
the  mothers  of  their  children. 

"  But  how  can  we  do  that?  "  cried  a  member  of  the  colonial  council, 
often  referred  to  as  "  the  best  native  on  the  island,"  yet  who  makes  no 
secret  of  having  his  progeny  scattered  far  and  wide.  "  Most  of  us  are 
married  already ;  besides,  we  would  have  to  legalize  polygamy  to  carry 
out  this  proposed  law.  We  are  quite  willing  to  continue  the  two  dollars 
a  month  to  our  outside  children,  but  how  can  we  marry  their  mothers  ? 
They  are  not  even  of  our  own  class !  " 

Illegitimacy  gives  rise  to  another  problem.  By  the  Danish  laws 
still  in  force  every  minor  must  have  a  guardian,  and  that  guardian  can- 
not be  a  woman,  even  though  she  be  the  mother.  Her  older  brother, 
her  father,  or  some  more  distant  relative,  slightly  interested  in  his 
task,  commonly  becomes  the  legal  sponsor  for  her  fatherless  offspring. 
The  duties  of  a  guardian  are,  succintly,  to  "  take  charge  of  the  minor's 
property,"  with  the  resultant  abuse  to  be  expected.  Policemen  are 
now  and  then  appointed  the  legal  guardians  of  a  dozen  or  more  young 
rascals,  and  it  goes  without  saying  that  they  do  not  lie  awake  nights 
worrying  about  the  moral  and  material  advancement  of  their  wards. 

Another  clause  that  is  not  likely  to  escape  the  blue  pencil  of  the 
councils  is  that  giving  the  authorities  the  right  to  search  the  persons 
and  carts  of  those  carrying  produce  and  to  demand  proof  of  its  legal 
possession.  Yet  without  some  such  law  there  is  slight  hope  of  stamp- 
ing out  the  wide-spread  larceny  of  growing  crops. 

One  of  our  most  serious  problems  in  the  Virgin  Islands  is  to  combat 
disease.  The  Danes  had  only  three  doctors  on  the  islands ;  now  sixteen 
navy  physicians  are  busy  all  the  time.  Their  fees  are  turned  into  the 
colonial  treasury,  an  arrangement  nowhere  else  in  force  in  American 
territory.  Half  the  children  die  as  a  natural  course,  though  the  islands 
are  really  very  healthful,  and  no  white  child  born  under  proper  condi- 
tions has  died  since  American  occupation.  There  is  no  hookworm  and 
little  malaria ;  but  much  pellagra  and  "  big  leg,"  or  elephantiasis.  Tu- 
berculosis is  common,  and  tests  indicate  that  eighty  per  cent,  of  the 
population  is  infected  with  a  hereditary  blood  disease.  There  is  a  leper 
colony  in  St.  Croix.  The  present  generation,  in  the  opinion  of  the  navy 


334          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

men,  is  hopeless.  In  the  improvement  of  the  next  they  are  hampered 
by  the  ignorance,  indifference,  and  superstition  of  the  parents.  The 
doctors  of  "  West  End  "  found  nothing  unusual  in  the  case  of  a  baby 
that  was  brought  to  the  hospital  already  dead  because  the  father  had 
taken  it  first  to  a  native  healer,  who  put  "  chibble  "  (pot  herbs)  under 
its  nose  to  cure  it  of  acute  indigestion. 

But  there  is  a  worse  problem  than  that  facing  us  in  the  Virgin 
Islands  —  the  elimination  of  the  habit  of  trying  to  live  off  the  exertions 
of  others.  Thanks  to  their  race,  history,  and  situation,  the  islanders 
are  inveterate,  almost  unconscious,  beggars.  Young  or  old,  black  or 
white  —  for  environment  has  given  even  those  of  Caucasian  ancestry 
almost  the  same  habits  and  "ideals  "  as  the  negro  —  they  are  all  gifted 
with  the  extended  palm.  If  they  do  not  all  beg  individually,  they  do  so 
collectively,  in  a  frank,  shameless  assertion  that  they  cannot  support 
themselves.  The  Danes  left  a  "  rum  fund  "  that  is  designed  to  aid  all 
those  who  "  have  seen  better  days,"  ana  to  judge  by  the  applicants  the 
entire  population  ranks  itself  in  that  category.  The  native  woman 
clerk  at  the  "  West  End  "  police  station  does  not  hesitate  to  give  any 
one,  even  the  four-dollars-a-day  sugar-porters  on  the  wharves,  a  certifi- 
cate that  he  is  unable  to  pay  for  medical  attention,  though  the  navy 
doctors'  fees  are  nominal  and,  even  when  they  are  paid,  go  into  the 
colonial  treasury.  The  admiral-governor  gave  a  reception  to  the  natives. 
Food  was  provided  for  five  hundred  —  and  was  carried  off  by  the  first 
hundred  street  women  and  urchins  who  surged  through  the  door.  Next 
day  a  large  crowd  came  to  demand  their  share,  saying  they  had  got 
nothing  the  day  before.  One  of  the  "  labor  leaders  "  told  the  negroes 
of  St.  Croix  to  hide  their  mahogany  bedsteads  and  phonographs  and 
sleep  on  drygoods  boxes  while  the  congressional  committee  was 
scheduled  to  visit  the  island.  Of  the  entire  crowd  appearing  before 
that  committee  not  one  had  the  general  good  of  the  islands  on  his 
lips,  but  all  came  with  some  petty  personal  complaint  or  request. 

In  short  our  new  wards  want  all  they  can  get  out  of  us.  They  want 
Uncle  Sam  to  provide  them  with  schools,  with  sanitation,  with  irriga- 
tion, with  galvanized  hill-sides,  with  roads  —  even  in  St.  Croix,  which 
has  better  highways  than  almost  any  State  in  the  Union  —  with  public 
markets,  with  libraries,  with  means  of  public  transportation,  with  any- 
thing else  which,  in  his  unsophisticated  generosity,  he  chooses  to  give, 
so  long  as  he  does  not  require  them  to  contribute  their  own  means  and 
labor  to  that  end.  The  colonial  council  of  St.  Croix  "  hopes  means  will 
be  found  to  get  Congress  to  appropriate  a  half  million  a  year,  a  sum  far 


IN  AND  ABOUT  OUR  VIRGIN  ISLANDS  335 

beyond  our  own  means,  so  that  we  can  live  up  to  the  high  ideals  of  our 
great  American  nation."  It  never  seems  to  occur  to  them  that  the 
schools,  libraries,  and  streets  in  our  cities  are  paid  for  by  the  inhabitants 
thereof ;  they  have  the  popular  view  of  Uncle  Sam  as  the  world's  Santa 
Claus.  Yet  many  of  the  very  members  of  that  council  have  made 
fortunes  in  St.  Croix  and  probably  could  themselves  pay  a  large  part 
of  the  sum  demanded  without  any  more  difficulty  than  the  average 
American  finds  in  paying  his  taxes.  Nai've  as  they  are,  the  Virgin 
Islanders  can  scarcely  expect  Americans  to  adopt  them  and  never  let 
them  work  or  want  again,  yet  they  talk  as  if  they  had  some  such 
thought  in  mind.  Or,  as  a  congressman  put  it  during  a  public  hearing, 
"  I  doubt  whether  the  farmers  of  my  State  of  Kansas  will  be  willing 
to  get  up  at  four  all  summer  and  pay  money  into  the  federal  treasury 
so  that  you  can  sleep  until  nine  in  the  morning  and  stroll  in  the  park  the 
rest  of  the  day." 

There  is  no  reason  why  the  Virgin-Islanders  should  not  be  sufficiently 
taxed  to  support  their  own  schools  and  other  requirements.  Even  if 
St.  Thomas  is  now  largely  barren,  many  of  its  shopkeepers  are  steadily 
growing  wealthy.  The  Danish  planters  of  St.  Croix  send  fortunes 
home  to  Denmark  every  year;  at  the  present  price  of  sugar  they  alone 
should  be  able  easily  to  contribute  a  sum  equal  to  that  they  are  demand- 
ing from  Congress.  Should  not  even  dollar-a-day  negroes  pay  some- 
thing in  taxes?  It  might  develop  their  civic  spirit.  The  Virgin- 
Islanders  need  many  things,  it  is  true ;  but  there  are  millions  living  in, 
and  paying  taxes  to,  the  United  States  who  have  by  no  means  what  al- 
most every  Virgin-Islander  has,  or  could  have  for  a  little  exertion. 
The  future  of  the  islands  depends  largely  on  whether  or  not  we  succumb 
to  our  national  tendency  to  make  our  wards  mendicants  for  life,  or  give 
them  a  start  and  let  them  work  their  own  way  through  the  college  of 
civilization. 

Whenever  I  look  back  upon  our  new  possessions  I  remember  a  sig- 
nificant little  episode  that  took  place  during  our  first  day  in  St.  Thomas. 
A  negro  woman  was  sitting  a  short  way  up  one  of  the  great  street 
stairways  that  climb  the  hills  of  Charlotte  Amalie.  A  descending 
friend  paused  to  ask  her  what  was  the  matter,  and  she  replied  in  that 
slow,  whining  singsong  peculiar  to  the  community : 

"  Me  knees  jes  wilfully  refuse  to  carry  me  up  dem  steps." 

That  is  the  trouble  with  most  of  the  Virgin-Islanders.  Their  own 
knees  jes  wilfully  refuse  to  carry  them  up  the  stairway  of  civilization. 
They  will  have  to  be  lifted  —  or  booted. 


THE  BRITISH  WEST  INDIES 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE   CARIBBEE   ISLANDS 

ONCE  he  has  reached  our  Virgin  Islands,  the  traveler  down  the 
stepping-stones  of  the  West  Indies  has  left  his  worst  experi- 
ences behind  him.  For  while  connections  are  rare  and  pre- 
carious between  the  large  islands  of  the  north  Caribbean,  the  tiny  ones 
forming  its  eastern  boundary  are  favored  with  frequent  and  comfort- 
able intercommunication.  Several  steamship  lines  from  the  north  make 
St.  Thomas  their  first  stop,  and  pausing  a  day  or  two  in  every  island 
of  any  importance  beyond,  give  the  through  traveler  all  the  time  he  can 
spend  to  advantage  in  all  but  three  or  four  of  the  Lesser  Antilles. 
In  these  he  can  drop  off  for  a  more  extended  exploration  and  catch 
the  next  steamer  a  week  or  two  later. 

A  twelve-hour  run  from  St.  Croix,  with  a  glimpse  of  the  tiny  Dutch 
islands  of  Saba  and  St.  Eustatius,  peering  above  the  sea  like  drowning 
volcanoes,  brought  us  to  what  the  British  so  familiarly  call  St.  Kitts. 
Columbus  named  it  St.  Christopher,  one  legend  having  it  that  he  dis- 
covered it  on  his  own  patron  saint's  day,  another  that  he  saw  in  its 
form  a  resemblance  to  that  worthy  carrying  in  his  arms  the  infant 
Jesus.  The  resemblance  is  not  apparent  to  the  critical  eye,  but  the  ad- 
mirals of  those  days,  you  recall,  were  not  compelled  to  take  their  grape- 
juice  unfermented.  Besides,  we  must  not  be  too  hard  upon  the  busy 
"  old  man  "  of  the  caravel  fleet.  With  a  sailor  thrusting  his  head  into 
the  cabin  every  hour  or  so  to  say,  "  Another  island,  vuestra  merced; 
what  shall  we  call  it  ?  "  it  was  natural  that  the  Genoese,  having  no 
modern  novels  at  hand,  should  curse  his  gout  and  hobble  across  to  the 
saints'  calendar  on  the  opposite  bulkhead. 

St.  Kitts  has  more  nearly  the  form  of  a  heaping  plate  of  curry  and 
rice  —  curious  this  should  not  have  occurred  to  the  galley-fed  seaman  — 
culminating  in  Mt.  Misery,  four  thousand  and  some  feet  high,  with  an 
eight  hundred  foot  crater  nicely  proportioned  to  hold  the  curry  and  still 
steaming  with  clouds  of  vapor  that  habitually  conceal  its  summit.  From 
the  shores  to  the  steeper  heights  of  the  mountain  the  swiftly  sloping 
island  is  covered  with  sugar-cane;  above  that  the  woods  are  said  to 

339 


340          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

be  full  of  monkeys,  descendants  of  the  pets  which  British  soldiers 
brought  with  them  when  St.  Kitts  was  a  bone  of  contention  between 
the  French  and  the  English.  With  one  slight  exception,  this  and  the 
neighboring  island  of  Nevis  are  the  only  West  Indies  inhabited  by  our 
racial  ancestors,  which  are  so  troublesome  that  their  direct  descendants 
below  have  given  up  trying  to  plant  their  gardens  more  than  half-way 
up  the  mountains. 

Though  St.  Kitts  was  the  first  island  of  the  West  Indies  to  be  settled 
by  the  English,  antedating  even  ultra-British  Barbados  in  that  regard 
by  nearly  two  years,  its  capital  bears  the  French  name  of  Basse  Terre. 
It  is  an  uninteresting  town  of  some  seven  thousand  inhabitants,  scarcely 
one  in  a  hundred  of  whom  boast  of  a  family  tree  wholly  free  from 
African  graftings,  and  most  of  them  living  in  unpainted,  weather- 
blackened,  shingle  cabins  hidden  away  in  the  forests  of  cocoanut  palms. 
Even  the  larger  houses  in  the  center  of  town  are  chiefly  built  of  clap- 
boards or  shingles,  painted  only  by  the  elements,  and  with  narrow 
little  eaves  that  give  them  the  air  of  wearing  hats  several  sizes  too 
small  for  them.  The  sums  that  are  uselessly  squandered  on  window- 
glass  would  easily  suffice  to  give  the  entire  town  a  sadly  needed  coating 
of  paint,  were  it  not  that  all  such  improvements  are  taxed  out  of  exist- 
ence, as  in  most  of  the  British  West  Indies.  The  only  pleasant  spot  in 
town  is  a  kind  of  Spanish  plaza' run  wild,  generously  shaded  with  royal 
palms  and  spreading  tropical  trees,  beneath  which  the  grass  stands  ankle- 
high  and  hens  pilot  their  broods  about  among  the  brown  windrows  of 
fallen  leaves.  Its  unshaven  condition  rather  enhances  a  certain  rustic 
beauty  that  is  not  marred  by  an  unexpectedly  artistic  old  stone  foun- 
tain in  its  center.  Beyond  the  last  lopsided  negro  hovels  Basse  Terre 
is  surrounded  by  cane-fields,  with  Mt.  Misery  piled  into  the  sky  close 
behind  them. 

We  had  the  misfortune  to  first  land  in  British  territory  on  a  Sunday. 
Basse  Terre  was  as  dead  as  if  a  general  funeral  were  just  over.  It  was 
not  simply  that  we  bemoaned  with  the  tourist-minded  fellow-country- 
men from  the  steamer  the  fact  that  every  "  Liquor  Store  "  was  tight 
and  genuinely  closed;  the  dreary  lifelessness  of  the  whole  place  got  on 
our  nerves.  The  very  trade  wind  seemed  to  refrain  from  any  un- 
necessary exertion;  the  citizens  appeared  to  have  given  even  their 
minds  a  holiday  and  replied  to  the  simplest  questions  with  a  vacant 
stare.  It  was  a  "  holy  day  "  as  truly  as  a  French  or  Spanish  Sunday 
is  a  "  day  of  feast,"  or  "  festival."  I  imagine  heaven  is  much  like  an 
English  community  on  a  Sunday  —  so  piously  dull  that  a  new  inmate 


THE  CARIBBEE  ISLANDS  341 

would  soon  be  on  his  knees  imploring  the  gatekeeper  to  let  him  go 
to  the  only  other  available  place. 

At  eleven  o'clock  four  species  of  church  service  broke  out,  the 
Anglican,  Catholic,  Moravian,  and  what  a  black  policeman  in  a  white 
blouse  and  helmet  and  the  deliberate  airs  of  a  London  "  bobby  "  referred 
to  in  a  Sunday  whisper  as  the  "  Whistling."  We  went.  One  was 
forced  to,  in  self-defense  and  for  the  utter  absence  of  any  other  form 
of  amusement.  Then  we  understood  why  the  community  could  endure 
the  apparent  lack  of  recreation  and  exercise  of  its  deadly  Sabbath. 
Negroes  striving  to  maintain  the  cold,  calm,  rather  bored  English  man- 
ner from  opening  hymn  to  benediction  supplied  the  former,  and  the 
ups  and  downs  of  the  Anglican  service  furnished  the  latter. 

We  found  St.  Kitts  more  down-at-heel,  more  indolent,  less  self- 
relying  than  even  our  Virgin  Islands.  The  shingle  shacks  of  Basse 
Terre  were  more  miserable  than  those  of  St.  Thomas ;  the  swarms  of 
negroes  loafing  under  the  palm  trees  about  them  were  as  ragged  as  they 
were  lazy  and  insolent.  Conrad's  "  Nigger  of  the  Narcissus,"  you  may 
recall,  came  from  St.  Kitts.  His  replica,  except  in  the  genuineness  of 
his  ailment,  could  be  seen  in  any  patch  of  shade.  A  white  stranger 
strolling  through  the  poorer  section  was  the  constant  target  of  foul 
language  and  even  more  loathsome  annoyances  from  both  sexes  and 
all  ages;  in  the  center  of  town  his  footsteps  were  constantly  dogged 
by  clamoring  urchins  who  replied  to  the  slightest  protest  with  streams 
of  curses  even  in  the  presence  of  white  residents  and  the  serenely  un- 
conscious negro  policemen.  The  inhabitants  were  incorrigible  beggars, 
from  street  loafers  to  church  wardens ;  even  the  island  postmaster 
begged,  under  the  pretense  of  selling  a  historical  pamphlet ;  the  country 
people  left  their  "work"  in  the  fields  to  shout  for  alms  from  the 
passer-by. 

A  highway  encircles  the  island,  which  is  twenty-three  miles  long  and 
five  wide.  It  flanks  Brimstone  Hill,  sometimes  called  the  "  Gibraltar  of 
the  West  Indies  "  in  memory  of  the  part  it  played  in  the  wars  between 
the  French  and  English  for  the  control  of  the  Caribbean.  Cane-fields 
spread  with  monotonous  sameness  on  either  side  of  the  moderately  well- 
kept  roads,  with  here  and  there  an  old  stone  tower  that  was  once  a 
windmill  and  what  seems  many  chimneys  to  one  who  recalls  how  seldom 
two  are  seen  in  the  same  horizon  in  Cuba.  On  the  whole,  the  island 
is  not  to  be  compared  with  St.  Croix;  despite  its  abundance  of  sugar 
it  has  a  poverty-stricken  air,  for  St.  Kitts  seems  to  have  lost  its  "  pep," 
jf  ever  it  had  any. 


342          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

It  took  two  days  to  unload  our  one-day's  cargo  in  the  harbor  of  Basse 
Terre.  The  local  stevedores  were  on  strike  and  their  places  had  been 
taken  by  less  experienced  men  from  the  neighboring  island  of  Nevis. 
This  had  magnified  the  constant  enmity  between  the  St.  Kittens  —  or 
whatever  is  the  proper  term  —  and  the  inhabitants  of  "  that  other 
country,"  as  they  called  it ;  but  it  was  an  enmity  without  violence, 
except  of  words,  torrents  of  words  in  what  close  observers  assert  are 
two  distinct  dialects,  though  the  islands  are  separated  only  by  a  narrow 
channel.  The  strikers,  to  all  appearances,  felt  they  had  won  their  chief 
aim  by  being  allowed  to  lie  on  their  backs  in  the  shade  of  the  cocoanut 
palms. 

The  steamer's  loss  was  my  gain,  for  the  delay  gave  me  time  to  visit 
the  island  Columbus  named  "  Nieve  "  from  the  snow-like  clouds  hover- 
ing about  it.  Open  sailing  scows,  perhaps  three  times  the  size  of  a 
lifeboat,  were  constantly  plying  across  the  bay  between  the  two  capitals. 
The  wind  was  on  the  beam  in  both  directions,  and  a  dozen  times  I  was 
convinced  that  the  waves  that  splashed  continuously  over  the  leeward 
gunwale  of  the  creaking  old  tub  would  fill  her  at  the  next  squall  sweep- 
ing through  the  deep  channel  between  the  islands.  But  each  time  the 
simple  son  of  Nevis  at  the  tiller  met  my  questioning  gaze  with  "  Not 
blow  too  bad  to-day,  boss,"  now, and  then  adding  the  reassuring  infor- 
mation that  several  boats  were  lost  here  every  year.  High  on  the  wind- 
ward gunwale  the  plunging  of  the  crude  vessel  was  exhilarating  in 
spite  of  the  apparent  danger,  but  the  negro  women  in  their  flashy 
dresses,  tin  bracelets,  and  much  cheap  jewelry,  who  sprawled  together 
in  the  bottom  of  the  boat  in  supreme  indifference  to  the  bilge-water 
and  filth  that  sloshed  back  and  forth  over  them  seemed  to  find  nothing 
agreeable  in  the  experience. 

The  craft  half  righted  herself  at  length  under  the  lee  of  the  island, 
heaped  up  into  the  clouds  in  similar  but  more  abrupt  and  compact  form 
than  St.  Kitts.  One  scarcely  needed  to  go  ashore  to  see  the  place,  so 
nicely  were  its  sights  spread  out  on  the  steeply  tilted  landscape.  Like 
its  neighbor  it  was  but  slightly  wooded  on  its  lower  slopes,  but  made 
tip  for  this  by  the  dense  vegetation  of  its  monkey-infested  heights.  One 
made  out  a  few  groves  of  cocoanuts,  patches  of  cotton,  and  green 
stretches  of  sugar-cane,  with  here  and  there  a  windmill  tower,  one  of 
which  still  survived,  its  slowly  turning  arms  giving  a  mild  suggestion 
of  the  Azores.  Charlestown  soon  appeared  out  on  the  end  of  a  low 
point,  a  modest  little  town  with  a  few  red  roofs  peering  through  the 
cocoanut  trees.  Gingertown,  five  miles  in  the  interior,  and  the  village 


THE  CARIBBEE  ISLANDS  343 

of  Newcastle  farther  down  the  coast  are  the  only  other  places  of  any 
size,  though  the  island  is  everywhere  well  populated.  Time  was  when 
Nevis  was  a  famous  watering  place  for  Europe  and  America,  with 
thermal  baths  and  medicinal  waters,  and  an  important  capital  named 
Jamestown,  from  which  all  this  region  of  the  Caribbean  was  ruled. 
But  the  city  was  destroyed  one  day  by  an  earthquake  and  submerged 
beneath  the  sea,  where  some  of  its  coral-encrusted  ruins  can  still  be 
seen  not  far  from  the  shore.  Natural  causes  led  to  the  island's  gradual 
isolation,  and  to-day,  though  its  hot  baths  are  exploited  by  an  American 
owned  hotel,  it  becomes  highly  excited  at  the  arrival  of  a  stranger  from 
the  outside  world. 

Charlestown  had  little  of  the  insolence  of  St.  Kitts,  though  it  was 
by  no  means  free  from  beggars.  Its  masses  were  more  naive  in  manner, 
even  more  ragged  of  garb.  Nine  pence  a  day  is  the  average  adult  male 
wage  of  even  those  who  succeed  in  finding  work.  Obeah,  or  African 
witchcraft,  seemed  still  to  maintain  a  hold,  for  even  the  native  bank 
clerk  who  piloted  me  about  town  acknowledged  a  belief  in  certain  forms 
of  it.  Two  or  three  blocks  from  the  little  triangular  park  that  marks 
the  center  of  town  are  the  ruins  of  a  gray  stone  building  in  which 
Alexander  Hamilton  is  reputed  to  have  been  born.  British  visitors  are 
more  interested  in  the  house  where  Nelson  lived  and  the  little  church 
in  which  he  was  married  to  the  widow  Nisbet,  two  miles  up  the  sloping 
hillside.  Love  for  England  does  not  greatly  flourish  in  Nevis,  if  one 
may  take  surface  indications  as  evidence. 

"  We  are  ruled  over  by  an  autocrat,  a  white  Barbadian  magistrate," 
complained  an  islander  of  the  better  class,  while  the  group  about  him 
nodded  approval.  "  England  takes  everything  from  us  and  does  noth- 
ing for  us.  If  it  were  not  for  the  prohibition  that  would  come  with  it, 
we  would  be  glad  to  see  the  island  under  American  rule." 

A  forty-mile  run  during  the  night  brought  us  to  Antigua.  Steamers 
anchor  so  far  off  shore  that  a  government  launch  is  required  to  do  the 
work  performed  in  most  of  the  Lesser  Antilles  by  rowboats.  For 
though  there  is  a  splendid  double  harbor  on  the  opposite  side  of  the 
island,  the  English  cling  to  their  invariable  Caribbean  rule  of  building 
the  capital  and  only  city  on  the  leeward  shore.  Two  pretty  headlands 
are  passed  on  the  way  in,  the  more  prominent  of  them  occupied  by  a 
leper  asylum ;  both  are  crowned  by  fortresses  dating  back  to  the  days 
when  England  fought  to  maintain  her  hold  on  the  West  Indies.  From 
the  bay  St.  John's  presents  an  agreeable  picture  in  the  morning  sun- 


344  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

light,  an  ancient  two-towered  cathedral  bulking  above  the  greenery  con- 
stituting the  most  conspicuous  landmark.  It  is  much  more  of  a  town 
than  Basse  Terre,  though  with  the  same  wooden,  shingled,  often  un- 
painted  houses,  and  wide,  unattractive,  right-angled  streets.  What 
energy  it  may  once  have  had  seems  largely  to  have  departed,  and  for 
all  its  size  it  has  the  air  of  a  half-forgotten  village.  Its  shops  open 
at  seven,  close  from  nine  to  ten  for  breakfast,  and  put  up  their  shutters 
for  the  day  at  four.  On  closer  inspection  the  cathedral  proves  to  be 
two  churches,  one  of  wood  enclosed  within  another  of  stone,  as  a  pro- 
tection against  earthquakes.  The  negro  women  of  the  market-place  are 
given  to  the  display  of  brilliant  calicos,  but  the  population  as  a  whole 
has  little  of  the  color,  —  except  in  complexion  —  the  dignity,  and  that 
suggestion  of  Gallic  grace  of  the  French  islanders. 

Antigua,  thirteen  by  nine  miles,  is  lower  and  less  mountainous  than 
St.  Kitts,  being  of  limestone  rather  than  volcanic  formation,  with 
less  luxuriant  vegetation,  having  been  almost  wholly  denuded  of  its 
forests.  In  consequence,  it  suffers  somewhat  for  lack  of  rainfall, 
though  it  is  almost  everywhere  cultivated,  and  offers  many  a  pretty 
vista  of  rolling  landscape,  usually  with  a  patch  of  sea  at  the  end  of 
it.  Sugar-cane  is  by  far  its  most  important  product,  though  corn-fields 
here  and  there  break  the  lighter  green  monotony,  and  limes  and  onions 
are  piled  high  in  crates  on  St.  John's  water-front.  The  island  roads 
are  tolerable.  Automobiles,  mainly  of  the  Ford  variety,  make  it  pos- 
sible for  the  traveler  to  see  its  "  sights "  in  a  few  hours  with  less 
damage  to  the  exchequer  than  in  many  of  the  West  Indies.  Women 
in  rather  graceless  colored  turbans  are  more  numerous  than  men  in  the 
cane-fields,  where  wages  average  4^  pence  per  hundred  holes  of  cane, 
whether  for  planting,  hoeing,  or  cutting,  making  the  daily  wage  of 
the  majority  about  fifteen  cents.  What  they  do  with  all  that  money  is 
a  problem  we  found  no  time  to  solve,  thought  there  were  evidences  that 
a  fair  proportion  of  it  is  invested  in  native  rum.  Like  all  the  world, 
Antigua  has  had  her  share  of  labor  troubles  during  the  past  few  years. 
Two  seasons  ago  much  cane  was  burned  by  the  incensed  workers,  but 
the  killing  of  several  and  the  wounding  of  some  thirty  more  by  govern- 
ment troops  has  settled  the  wage  problem  on  its  old  basis.  Though 
many  abandoned  estates,  with  the  familiar  square  brick  chimneys  and 
armless  windmill  towers,  dot  the  landscape,  two  sugar  factories  to-day 
consume  virtually  all  the  cane.  They  are  rather  old-fashioned  institu- 
tions, with  no  such  pretty,  well-planned  bateys  and  comfortable  em- 
ployee-houses as  are  to  be  found  in  Cuba  and  Porto  Rico.  The  hauling 


THE  CARIBBEE  ISLANDS  345 

is  chiefly  done  by  tippy  two-wheeled  carts,  drawn  by  mules  in  tandem, 
occasionally  by  oxen,  specially  designed,  it  would  seem,  to  spill  their 
loads  each  time  an  automobile  forces  them  to  the  edge  of  the  road. 
Mangos  and  bamboo,  in  certain  sections  clumps  of  cactus  and  patches  of 
that  troublesome  thorny  vegetation  which  the  Cubans  call  aroma,  are 
the  chief  landscape  decorations,  except  on  the  tops  of  the  scrub-fuzzy, 
rather  than  forested  hills.  Shacks  covered  with  shingles  from  mudsill 
to  roof-tree,  interspersed  with  fewer  thatched  and  once  whitewashed 
huts,  all  of  them  somewhat  less  miserable  than  those  of  St.  Kitts,  house 
the  country  people  in  scattered  formation  or  occasional  clusters  bearing 
such  misnomers  as  All  Saints'  Village.  Like  most  of  the  Lesser 
Antilles,  Antigua  was  once  French,  but  it  has  retained  less  of  the  patois 
than  the  other  islands  of  similar  history. 

The  goal  of  most  mere  visitors  to  Antigua  is  English  Harbor  on  the 
\vindward  coast,  two  almost  landlocked  blue  basins  in  which  Nelson  re- 
fitted his  fleet  in  preparation  for  the  battle  of  Trafalgar.  Here  stand 
several  massive  stone  buildings,  occupied  now  only  by  the  negro  care- 
taker and  his  family.  In  the  great  stone  barracks  is  a  patch  of  wall 
decorated  by  the  none  too  artistic  hand  of  the  present  King  George, 
then  a  sub-lieutenant  in  the  British  navy,  wishing  in  vari-colored  large 
letters  "  A  Merry  Christmas  2  You  All,"  the  space  being  reverently 
covered  now  by  a  padlocked  pair  of  shutters.  More  popular  with  the 
romantic-minded  is  the  immense  anchor  serving  as  gravestone  of  one, 
Lieutenant  Peterson.  The  lieutenant,  runs  the  story,  was  the  rival  of 
his  commanding  officer  for  the  hand  of  the  island  belle.  On  the  eve  of 
a  naval  ball  he  was  ordered  not  to  offer  the  young  lady  his  escort.  He 
appeared  with  her  at  the  height  of  the  festivities,  however,  she  having 
declined  in  his  favor  the  attentions  of  the  commander,  whereupon  the 
latter  shot  the  lieutenant  for  disobeying  orders  and  caused  him  to  be 
buried  that  same  night  in  the  barracks  compound. 

Patriotism  for  the  empire  to  which  they  belong  is  not  one  of  the 
chief  characteristics  of  the  Antiguans.  Indeed,  there  is  "  no  love 
whatever  "  for  England,  if  we  are  to  believe  most  of  those  with  whom  I 
talked  on  the  subject. 

"  There  never  was  any,  even  in  the  old  days,"  asserted  a  man  whose 
parents  emigrated  from  England  half  a  century  ago.  "  Before  the 
war,"  he  continued,  "  England  would  not  buy  her  sugar  in  the  West 
Indies  because  she  could  get  it  cheaper  from  the  beet-growers  in  Ger- 
many and  Austria,  thanks  to  their  government  bounty.  The  sugar  we 
sent  to  England  often  lay  on  the  wharves  over  there  for  months,  until 


346  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

we  had  to  send  money  to  pay  wharfage  and  storage,  and  feed  our  sugar 
to  the  hogs  here  at  home.  Once  we  enjoyed  home  rule ;  now  our  laws 
are  made  by  the  Secretary  for  the  West  Indies  in  London,  who  thinks 
we  wear  breech-clouts  and  speak  some  African  dialect.  They  take 
everything  from  us  in  taxes  and  do  nothing  for  us  in  return.  Our 
governor  thinks  his  only  duty  is  to  hold  us  down.  He  tries  to  be  a 
little  tin  god,  permits  no  one  else  to  ride  ifl  the  public  launch  with 
him  when  he  goes  out  to  a  ship,  and  all  that  sort  of  thing.  He  came 
here  two  years  ago  from  a  similar  position  in  one  of  our  African 
colonies,  where  he  was  accustomed  to  see  everyone  bring  him  gifts  and 
bow  their  heads  in  the  sand  whenever  he  passed.  He  got  a  surprise 
when  he  landed  here.  Except  for  a  few  nigger  policemen,  no  one 
paid  him  any  attention  whatever,  except  that  the  drunken  fellows 
shouted  after  him  in  the  streets  and  called  him  foul  names.  We  had  no 
conscription  here,  yet  we  sent  a  large  contingent.  The  well-to-do  whites 
paid  their  way  home  to  enlist ;  the  poor  ones  went  over  with  the  niggers 
and  were  slowly  picked  out  after  they  got  over  there.  And  England 
has  not  done  a  thing  for  a  man  of  them.  The  blacks  are  angry  because 
they  got  no  promotion  and  all  the  dirtiest  jobs.  Mighty  few  of  us 
would  go  again  to  fight  for  the  blooming  Empire." 

Antigua  is  the  capital  of  what 'the  British  call,  for  political  purposes, 
the  Leeward  Islands,  comprising  all  their  holdings  between  Santa  Cruz 
and  Martinique.  Geographically  this  is  a  misnomer,  the  real  leeward 
islands  being  the  Greater  Antilles,  from  Cuba  to  Porto  Rico  inclusive, 
and  all  the  Lesser  Antilles  the  windward  islands,  as  the  Spaniards 
recognized  and  still  maintain.  But  the  unnatural  division  serves  the 
purpose  for  which  it  was  made.  St.  John's  is  the  seat  of  the  governor 
and  the  archbishop  of  all  the  group,  with  the  principal  prison  and 
asylum.  Anguilla,  far  to  the  north,  near  the  Dutch-French  island  of 
St.  Martin,  is  of  coral  formation,  comparatively  low  and  flat.  The 
same  may  be  said  of  Barbuda,  large  as  Antigua  and  reputed  to  have 
gone  back  to  nature  under  the  improvident  descendants  of  the  slaves 
of  the  Codrington  family  that  long  reigned  supreme  upon  it.  Montser- 
rat,  on  the  other  hand,  is  very  mountainous,  a  flat-topped,  pyramidal 
fragment  of  earth  thirty-five  square  miles  in  extent,  its  lower  slopes 
planted  with  limes  and  cacao,  its  upper  reaches  forest-clad.  White 
ribbons  of  roads  set  forth  from  Plymouth,  the  capital,  in  what  looks 
like  a  determined  effort  to  scale  the  precipitous  heights,  but  soon  give 
up  the  attempt.  The  population  of  the  island  is  mainly  negro-Irish, 
it  having  been  settled  by  emigrants  from  the  "  Old  Sod,"  so  that  to  this 


THE  CARIBBEE  ISLANDS  347 

day  Irish  names  predominate,  freckled  red-heads  with  African  features 
are  numerous,  and  the  inhabitants  are  noted  throughout  the  West  Indies 
for  their  brogue  and  their  gift  of  blarney. 

Dominica,  the  southernmost  and  largest  of  the  misnamed  Leeward 
Islands,  is  also  entitled  to  several  other  superlatives.  Most  of  the 
West  Indies  boast  themselves  the  "  Queen  of  the  Antilles,"  but  none 
with  more  justice  than  this  tiny  Porto  Rico  isolated  between  the  two 
principal  islands  of  "  French  America."  It  is  the  highest  of  the  Lesser 
Antilles,  Mt.  Diablotin  stretching  5314  feet  into  the  tropical  sky;  the 
wettest,  being  habitually  surrounded  by  blue-black  clouds  that  pour 
forth  their  deluges  by  night  or  by  day,  in  or  out  of  season,  even  when 
.ill  the  sky  about  it  is  translucent  blue ;  and  the  world's  greatest  enemy 
of  the  scurvy,  for  it  produces  most  of  that  fruit  which  has  given  the 
British  sailor  the  nickname  of  "  limy."  Incidentally,  it  is  the  most 
difficult  of  the  West  Indies  in  which  to  travel. 

Roseau,  the  capital,  sits  right  out  on  the  Caribbean,  the  mountains 
climbing  directly,  without  an  instant's  hesitation,  into  the  sky  behind  it. 
They  are  as  sheer  beneath  water  as  above  it  and  the  steamer  anchors 
within  an  easy  stone's  throw  of  the  wharves.  Boatmen  in  curious 
little  board  canoes,  showing  their  wooden  ribs  within  and  bearing  such 
French  names  as  "  Dieu  Donne,"  quickly  surround  the  new  arrival, 
some  of  them  bent  on  carrying  her  passengers  ashore  at  a  shilling  a 
head,  others  to  dive  for  pennies  thrown  into  this  deepest-blue  of  seas, 
which  is  yet  so  transparent  that  both  coin  and  swimmer  can  be  perfectly 
seen  as  far  down  as  lungs  will  carry  them.  Boats  of  the  same  quaint 
structure  and  only  slightly  larger  jockey  for  position  along  the  ship's 
side  to  receive  the  cargo  from  her  hatches.  They  are  unreliable  and 
poorly  adapted  for  the  purpose,  but  their  owners  stick  together  in  pro- 
tecting their  monopoly  and  every  modern  lighter  brought  to  Dominica 
has  invariably  been  scuttled  within  a  week.  Almost  within  the  shadow 
of  the  steamer  other  men  are  standing  stiffly  erect  in  the  extreme  stern 
of  their  fishing  canoes,  steering  them  by  almost  imperceptible  move- 
ments of  their  single  crude  paddle,  while  their  companions  cast  their 
nets  or  throw  stones  within  them  to  lure  the  fish  to  the  surface. 
Immense  hauls  they  make,  too,  without  going  a  hundred  yards  from 
the  shore.  How  many  fish  there  must  be  in  the  sea  when  thousands 
of  fishermen  can  ply  their  trade  about  each  of  these  West  Indian 
stepping-stones  the  year  round  ancl  come  home  every  day  laden  to  the 
gunwales  with  their  catches ! 


34«          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

Roseau  is  scarcely  more  than  a  village.  It  is  so  small  that  all  its 
business  is  carried  on  within  plain  sight  from  the  steamer's  deck, 
though  it  strives  to  look  very  important  with  its  few  two-story  stone 
buildings,  like  a  Briton  in  foreign  parts  aware  that  he  must  uphold  the 
national  dignity  unassisted.  It  is  less  given  to  wooden  structures  than 
many  of  its  rivals,  and  has  a  more  aged,  solid  air,  at  least  along  the 
water-front.  An  age-softened  gray  stone  church  that  looks  almost 
Spanish,  with  an  extraordinary  width  within,  like  a  market-hall  filled 
with  pews,  and  bilingual  signs  above  the  confessionals  bearing  the  names 
of  French  priests,  seems  conscious  of  its  mastery  over  the  few  small 
Protestant  chapels.  Higher  still  is  one  of  the  most  magnificent  little 
botanical  gardens  in  the  world,  with  hundreds  of  tropical  specimens 
arranged  with  the  unobtrusive  orderliness  of  an  English  park. 

I  visited  Dominica  twice,  and  on  the  second  occasion,  having  from 
early  morning  until  midnight,  hired  a  horse  to  ride  across  the  island. 
Roseau  Valley,  a  great  sloping  glen  like  a  cleft  in  the  mountains,  climbs 
swiftly  upward  to  the  clouds  behind  the  town,  a  rock-boiling  river, 
surprisingly  large  for  so  small  an  island,  pouring  down  it.  At  the 
bridge  across  the  stream  on  the  edge  of  town  is  what  claims  to  be  the 
greatest  lime-juice  factory  on  earth.  I  use  both  words  with  misgiving, 
for  it  is  no  more  a  factory  in  our^sense  of  the  term  than  the  white  lumps 
it  ships  away  to  a  scurvy-dreading  world  are  juice.  Toward  this  a 
constant  stream  of  limes,  which  we  would  be  more  apt  to  call  lemons, 
is  descending.  Women  and  girls  come  trotting  down  out  of  the  moun- 
tains with  bushel  baskets  of  them,  now  and  then  sitting  down  on  a 
boulder  to  rest  but  never  troubling  to  take  the  incredible  load  off  their 
heads.  Donkeys  with  enormous  straw  saddle-bags  heaped  high  with 
limes  pick  their  way  more  cautiously  down  the  steep  slope.  Occa- 
sionally even  a  man  deigns  to  jog  to  town  with  a  load  of  the  fruit. 
They  lie  everywhere  in  great  yellow  heaps  under  the  low  trees ;  they 
weigh  down  the  usually  rain-dripping  branches.  Yet  when  they  have 
been  grown  and  picked  and  carried  all  the  way  to  town,  they  sell  for 
a  mere  seven  shillings  a  barrel !  Small  wonder  the  human  pack-horses 
and  even  the  growers  are  more  extraordinarily  ragged  than  any  other 
West  Indians  outside  of  Haiti. 

Cacao  plants,  too,  are  piled  up  the  steeps  on  either  side  of  the  roaring 
river,  for  Dominica  has  that  constant  humidity  and  more  than  frequent 
rainfall  they  love  so  well.  The  unbroken  density  of  the  greenery  is 
one,  perhaps  the  chief,  charm  of  the  valley,  as  of  all  the  island.  No- 
where in  all  the  climb  does  the  eye  make  out  the  suggestion  of  a  clear- 


THE  CARIBBEE  ISLANDS  349 

ing.  Where  man  has  not  pitched  his  lime  or  cacao  orchards,  or  planted 
his  tiny  garden  patch,  nature  forces  the  fertile  black  soil  to  produce 
to  its  utmost  capacity.  It  is  an  un-American  density,  as  of  an  Oriental 
jungle,  all  but  completely  concealing  the  miserable  little  huts  tucked 
away  in  it  all  over  the  lower  hillsides;  it  makes  up  for  the  constant 
succession  of  heavy  showers  that  belie  the  sunny  promises  of  the  town 
and  harbor  below.  For  the  mountains  of  Dominica  have  an  annual 
rainfall  of  three  hundred  inches,  twenty-five  feet  of  water  a  year ! 

There  are  forty  automobiles  on  the  island  of  lemons,  but  they  do  not 
venture  far  from  home.  The  highway  up  the  valley  lasts  a  bare  three 
.niles  before  it  dwindles  to  a  mountain  trail  that  struggles  constantly 
upward,  now  steeply  along  the  brink  of  the  river  far  below,  now  in 
stony  zig-zags  that  make  no  real  progress,  for  all  their  pretense,  except 
in  altitude.  One  has  a  curiously  shut-in  feeling,  as  if  there  were  no 
escape  from  the  mighty  ravine  except  by  the  narrow,  slippery  path 
underfoot,  which  is,  indeed,  the  case.  Not  even  the  jet  black  in- 
habitants inured  to  mountain-climbing  from  birth,  have  attempted  to 
scale  the  heights  by  more  direct  paths  than  this  zigzag  trail  up  the  roof- 
steep  bottom  of  the  gorge.  They  speak  among  themselves  a  "  Creole  " 
as  incomprehensible,  even  to  one  familiar  with  French,  as  that  of  Haiti, 
though  they  babbled  a  bit  of  English  that  seemed  to  grow  less  fluent 
and  extensive  with  every  mile  away  from  the  capital.  There  the  white 
stranger  was  subjected  to  an  insolence  and  clamoring  at  his  heels  in- 
ferior only  in  volume  to  that  of  St.  Kitts;  up  here  in  the  mountains 
the  passers-by  yielded  the  trail  and  raised  their  ragged  headgear  with  a 
rustic  politeness  that  would  have  been  more  charming  had  it  not  almost 
invariably  been  followed  by  "  A  penny,  please,  sir  "  from  both  sexes 
and  all  ages.  For  all  their  mountaineer  diffidence,  they  are  so  given 
to  stealing  one  another's  crops  that  shops  throughout  the  island  are 
"  Licensed  to  Sell  Protected  Produce,"  that  the  police  may  have  a  means 
of  detecting  contraband.  Perhaps  they  are  scarcely  to  be  blamed  for 
their  light-fingered  habits,  with  wages  that  rarely  reach  the  lofty  height 
of  a  shilling  a  day. 

The  horse  had  leisurely  English  manners  and  the  deliberate,  loose- 
kneed  action  of  a  St.  Thomas  waiter,  so  that  we  made  far  less  progress 
than  his  rangy  form  had  promised.  He  showed,  too,  little  of  that  en- 
durance and  mountain  wisdom  for  which  the  far  smaller  animals  of 
tropical  America  are  noted.  We  reached  the  crest  of  the  island  at  last, 
however,  and  paused  on  the  edge  of  a  small  fresh-water  lake  said  to  fill 
the  crater  of  an  extinct  volcano.  Sedge-grass  surrounded  it  and  dense 


350          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

vegetation  framed  it  on  every  side,  but  there  was  nothing  remarkable 
about  it,  except,  perhaps,  to  the  Dominicans.  But  the  wealth  of  flora 
was  well  worth  the  excursion.  Tree-ferns,  ferns  large  and  small,  wild 
bananas,  lime-trees,  clumps  of  bamboo,  and  a  score  of  other  plants 
and  trees  which  only  a  botanist  with  tropical  experience  could  name, 
completely  concealed  the  earth,  as  the  trunks  of  all  the  larger  species 
were  hidden  under  climbing  parasites  with  immense  leaves,  and  even 
the  sheer  banks  were  covered  with  densest  vegetation. 

A  fog,  white  and  luminous,  yet  impenetrable  to  the  eye  at  more  than 
twenty  yards,  covered  all  the  island  top.  I  urged  the  animal  down  a 
far  steeper,  more  stony,  trail  than  that  we  had  climbed,  cut  deeper  than 
a  horseman's  head  into  the  red-black  mountainside  and  pitching  head- 
long downward  into  the  foggy  void.  A  half  hour  of  utter  stillness, 
broken  now  and  then  by  the  brief  song  of  the  solitaire  and  the  constant 
stumbling  of  the  horse's  hoofs  over  the  stones,  brought  us  suddenly 
to  the  edge  of  the  cloud,  with  a  magnificent  view  of  the  jagged  northern 
coast  edged  by  the  white  breakers  of  the  Atlantic.  A  few  negroes 
again  appeared,  climbing  easily  upward,  carrying  their  shoes  on  their 
heads,  an  excellent  place  to  wear  them  at  present  prices.  Now  and 
then  an  aged,  carelessly  constructed  hut  peered  out  from,  the  teeming 
wilderness,  but  the  sense  of  the  primeval,  the  uninhabitated,  the  un- 
known to  man,  brooded  over  all  the  scene  despite  these  and  the  stony 
trail  underfoot. 

Halfway  down  I  met  two  Carib  Indians,  easily  distinguishable  from 
the  bulk  of  the  inhabitants  by  their  features  and  color.  They  were 
short  and  muscular,  with  more  of  the  aggressive  air  of  the  Mexican 
highlander  than  the  slinking  demeanor  of  the  South  American  aborig- 
ines. They  carried  their  home-made  baskets  full  of  some  native 
produce  on  their  shoulders,  rather  than  on  their  heads,  and  apparently 
spoke  but  little  English.  They  came  from  the  Carib  reservation  on  the 
north  coast,  the  only  one  now  left  in  all  the  West  Indies  over  which, 
except  for  the  four  larger  islands,  their  man-eating  ancestors  ruled 
supreme  until  long  after  the  discovery.  When  at  length,  after  long 
warfare,  England  entered  into  a  treaty  with  them,  they  were  given  two 
patches  of  territory  for  their  own.  But  the  eruption  of  Soufriere  in 
St.  Vincent  in  1902  destroyed  the  colony  on  that  island,  and  to-day  the 
three  hundred  of  Dominica  are  the  only  ones  left,  and  barely  forty  of 
these,  it  is  said,  are  of  pure  blood.  They  live  at  peace  with  their  neigh- 
bors, make  baskets,  catch  fish,  and  are  noted  for  their  industry,  as  wild 
tribes  go,  in  agriculture. 


THE  CARIBBEE  ISLANDS  351 

More  than  halfway  down  to  sea-level  huts  began  to  grow  frequent 
again,  most  of  them  completely  covered  with  shingles  and  all  of  them 
devoid  of  any  but  the  scantiest  home-made  furniture.  Ragged,  useless- 
looking  inhabitants  stood  in  the  doorways  staring  at  the  extraordinary 
apparition  of  a  white  man,  many  of  them  calling  out  in  cheerful  voices 
for  alms  as  I  passed.  Dominica  is  evidently  an  island  without  time- 
pieces; almost  everyone  I  met  wanted  to  know  the  hour,  just  why 
was  not  apparent,  since  time  seemed  to  have  less  than  no  value  to 
them.  My  watch  having  been  stolen  in  Havana  and  I  having  declined 
to  tempt  West  Indians  again  by  buying  another,  I  could  not  satisfy 
their  curiosity.  Besides,  the  Caribbean  is  no  place  in  which  to  worry 
about  time ;  the  fact  that  the  sun  rises  and  sets  is  all  the  division  of 
eternity  needed  in  such  an  African  Eden. 

At  Rosalie,  an  old-fashioned  sugar-mill  and  a  scattering  of  huts  on 
the  north  coast,  I  made  a  calculation.  The  sun  was  high  overhead;  it 
could  not  be  later  than  two;  the  map  in  my  hand  showed  the  distance 
around  the  eastern  end  of  the  island  to  be  less  than  twice  that  over  the 
mountain ;  a  coast  road  would  be  comparatively  level  and  much  to  be 
preferred  to  another  climb  of  2500  feet  on  a  jaded  horse.  Besides,  I 
have  a  strong  antipathy  to  returning  the  same  way  I  have  come.  I 
made  a  few  inquiries.  The  childlike  inhabitants  on  this  coast  spoke 
almost  no  English  and  nothing  that  could  easily  be  recognized  as 
French,  but  they  seemed  to  understand  both  tongues  readily  enough.  I 
had  only  to  ask  if  it  were  about  four  hours  ride  to  the  capital  to  be 
assured  that  such  was  the  case.  It  was  not  until  too  late  that  I  realized 
they  were  giving  me  the  answer  they  thought  would  please  me  best,  like 
most  uncivilized  tribes,  with  perfect  indifference  to  the  facts  of  the  case. 
Any  distance  I  chose  to  assume  in  my  question  was  invariably  the  exact 
distance ;  when  I  awoke  to  my  error  and  took  to  asking  direct  instead 
of  leading  questions,  the  reply  was  invariably  a  soft  "  Yes,  sir,"  with 
an  instant  readiness  to  change  to  "  No,  sir,"  if  anything  in  my  manner 
suggested  that  I  preferred  a  negative  answer.  But  by  this  time  I  was 
too  far  along  the  coast-road  to  turn  back. 

I  had  only  myself  to  blame  for  what  soon  promised  to  be  a  pretty 
predicament.  Certainly  I  had  traveled  enough  in  uncivilized  countries 
to  know  such  people  cannot  be  depended  upon  for  even  approximate 
accuracy  in  matters  of  distance  or  time.  I  surely  was  mountain- 
experienced  enough  to  realize  that  an  island  as  small  and  as  lofty  as 
Dominica  could  have  but  little  level  land,  even  along  the  coast.  As  a 
matter  of  fact  it  had  virtually  none  at  all.  Never  did  the  atrocious  trail 


352          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

find  a  hundred  yards  of  flat  going.  One  after  another,  in  dogged, 
insistent,  disheartening  succession,  the  great  forest-clad  buttresses  of 
the  island  plunged  steeply  down  to  the  sea,  forcing  the  stony  path  to 
claw  its  way  upward  or  make  enormous  detours  around  the  intervening 
hollows,  only  to  pitch  instantly  down  again  from  each  hard-earned 
height  into  a  mighty  ravine,  beyond  which  another  appalling  mountain- 
wall  blocked  the  horizon  immediately  ahead.  To  make  matters  worse, 
the  horse  began  to  show  all  too  evident  signs  of  giving  out.  In  vain 
did  I  lash  him  with  such  weapons  as  I  could  snatch  from  the  jungle- 
wall  alongside,  not  daring  to  take  time  to  dismount  and  seek  a  better 
cudgel.  Steadily,  inevitably,  his  pace,  none  too  good  at  the  best,  de- 
creased. By  what  I  took  to  be  four  o'clock  he  could  not  be  urged  out 
of  a  slow  walk,  even  on  the  rare  bits  of  level  going;  by  five  he  was 
merely  crawling,  his  knees  visibly  trembling,  coming  every  few  yards 
to  a  complete  halt  from  which  he  could  be  driven  only  by  all  the  punish- 
ment I  could  inflict  upon  him.  His  condition  was  one  to  draw  tears, 
but  it  was  no  time  to  be  compassionate.  The  steamer  was  sailing  at 
midnight.  It  would  be  the  last  one  in  that  direction  for  two  weeks. 
Rachel  was  waiting  to  join  me  on  it  at  Martinique  and  continue  to  Bar- 
bados. No  one  on  board  knew  I  had  gone  on  an  excursion  into  the  hills, 
nor  even  that  I  had  left  the  steamer.  My  possessions  would  be  found 
scattered  about  my  stateroom ;  by  the  time  the  ship  reached  Martinique 
it  would  be  assumed  that  I  had  fallen  overboard  or  suffered  some 
equally  pleasant  fate.  I  had  barely  the  equivalent  of  five  dollars  on  my 
person,  not  an  extra  pair  of  socks,  not  even  a  tooth-brush  —  and  the 
Dominica  cable  was  broken.  Clearly  it  was  no  time  to  spare  the 
cudgel. 

But  it  was  of  no  use.  Near  sunset  the  horse  took  to  stumbling  to 
his  knees  at  every  step.  For  long  minutes  he  stood  doggedly  in  his 
tracks,  trembling  from  head  to  foot.  The  sweat  of  fatigue,  as  well  as 
heat,  ran  in  rivulets  down  his  flanks.  I  tumbled  off  and  tried  to  lead 
him.  We  were  climbing  another  of  those  incessant,  interminable  but- 
tresses. With  all  my  strength  I  could  only  drag  him  a  few  creeping 
steps  at  a  time.  After  each  short  advance  he  sat  down  lifelessly 
on  his  haunches.  If  I  abandoned  him  in  the  trail  there  was  no 
knowing  whether  the  owners  would  ever  see  him  again;  certainly  they 
would  not  the  saddle  and  bridle,  and  the  owners  were  a  simple  mulatto 
family  of  Roseau  who  could  ill  bear  such  a  loss.  But  I  could  scarcely 
risk  further  delay.  The  sun  was  drowning  in  the  Caribbean ;  the  hazy 
form  of  Martinique  thirty  miles  away  was  still  on  my  port  bow,  so 


THE  CARIBB£E  ISLANDS  353 

to  speak,  showing  that  I  had  not  yet  turned  the  point  of  the  island,  that 
I  was  not  yet  halfway  to  Roseau.  It  was  stupid  of  me  not  to  have 
realized  before  that  Dominica,  for  all  its  scant  35,000  ignorant  in- 
habitants, was  almost  as  large  as  the  French  island  in  the  offing,  and 
that  to  encircle  one  end  of  it  was  a  stiff  all-day  job. 

I  was  on  the  point  of  abandoning  the  animal  when  I  caught  sight  of 
a  man  climbing  the  trail  far  ahead  of  us,  the  first  person  I  had  seen 
in  more  than  an  hour.  I  shouted,  and  for  some  time  fancied  he  had 
dashed  off  into  the  wilderness  out  of  fear.  Then  a  break  in  the  vege- 
tation showed  him  again,  and  this  time  he  halted.  We  reached  him  at 
last,  a  stodgy  negro  youth  in  the  remnants  of  hat,  shirt,  and  trousers 
who  stood  at  attention,  like  a  soldier,  at  the  extreme  edge  of  the  trail, 
an  expression  between  fear  and  respectful  attention  on  his  stupid  black 
countenance. 

"  How  far  is  it  to  Roseau?  "  I  panted. 

"  Yes,  sir,"  he  replied,  seeming  to  poise  himself  for  a  dive  into  the 
jungle  void  behind  him. 

"  How  many  miles  to  Roseau  ?  "  I  repeated,  "  five  or  ten  or  —  " 

"  Yes,  sir,"  he  reiterated,  shifting  his  mammoth  bare  feet  uneasily. 

"  I  want  to  know  the  distance  to  the  city,"  I  cried,  unwisely  raising 
my  voice  in  my  haste  and  thereby  all  but  causing  him  to  bolt.  "  Can 
I  make  it  in  six  hours  ?  " 

"  Yes,  sir,"  he  answered,  quickly.  Then,  evidently  seeing  that  I  was 
not  pleased  with  the  answer,  he  added  hastily,  "  N  —  No,  sir." 

"Est-ce  qu'  on  pent  le  faire  en  six  heures?"  I  hazarded,  but  he 
seemed  to  understand  French  even  less  than  English  and  stared  at  me 
mutely.  The  brilliant  idea  of  wasting  no  more  time  passed  through  the 
place  my  mind  should  have  been.  I  snatched  out  my  note-book  and 
pencil. 

"  What  Js  your  name  ?  "  I  asked.     "  Can  you  write  ?  " 

He  could,  to  the  extent  of  laboriously  and  all  but  illegibly  penciling 
his  name,  to  which  I  added  his  address,  a  tiny  hamlet  up  in  the  moun- 
tains. I  explained  the  situation  to  him  briefly  in  words  of  one  syllable. 
He  seemed  to  follow  me.  At  least  he  answered  "  Yes,  sir  "  at  the  end 
of  each  sentence. 

"You  will  take  the  horse  to  the  police-station  in  Grand  Bay,"  I 
specified,  having  gathered  from  my  map  and  his  monosyllables  that  this 
was  the  next  town.  "  I  will  tell  the  police  there  what  to  do  with  him, 
and  I  will  leave  five  shillings  with  them  to  give  you  if  you  bring  horse, 
saddle  and  bridle,  and  do  not  try  to  ride  him  on  the  way." 


354          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

"  Yes  sir,"  he  replied,  taking  the  reins- 1  held  out  to  him,  and  I  turned 
and  fled  into  the  swiftly  descending  night. 

I  have  climbed  many  mountains  in  my  day,  but  none  that  were  as 
wearying  as  that  endless  succession  of  lofty  ridges  up  the  stony  sides 
of  which  I  stumbled  hour  after  hour  in  a  darkness  as  black  as  the 
bottom  of  a  well,  only  to  plunge  instantly  down  again  into  another 
mighty,  invisible  ravine.  Several  times  I  lost  the  trail;  how  I  kept  it 
at  all  is  a  mystery.  As  I  strained  forward  with  every  ounce  of  strength 
within  me  I  caught  myself  thanking  fortune,  or  whoever  has  my  par- 
ticular case  on  his  books,  that  I  had  been  a  tramp  all  my  days  and  had 
kept  myself  fit  for  such  an  ordeal.  Now  and  then  I  passed  through  a 
"  town,"  that  is,  what  voices  told  me  was  a  scattered  collection  of  huts 
hidden  in  the  vegetation  and  the  night  on  either  side  of  the  trail,  for  a 
hundred  yards  or  two,  along  which  a  few  ghostlike  figures  of  negroes  in 
white  garments  dodged  aside  at  sound  of  my  shod  footsteps,  each  time 
soon  giving  way  again  to  the  deep  stillness  of  an  uninhabited  wilderness, 
broken  only  by  the  monotonous  chorus  of  jungle  insects.  Which  of 
these  places  was  Grand  Bay  I  had  no  time  to  inquire,  much  less  batter 
my  head  against  the  native  stupidity  for  sufficient  time  to  find  the  police- 
station  and  make  known  my  case  to  slow-witted  black  officials.  I 
would  think  up  some  other  way  of  meeting  my  obligations  when  I  had 
accomplished  the  more  pressing  mission  on  hand. 

Once  the  trail  came  out  on  the  very  edge  of  the  sea,  crawling  along 
under  the  face  of  a  sheer  towering  cliff,  the  spray  dashing  up  to  my 
very  feet;  a  dozen  times  it  climbed  what  seemed  almost  perpendicu- 
larly into  the  invisible,  starless  sky  above  for  what  appeared  to  my 
wasting  strength  to  be  hours.  I  had  eaten  a  hasty  breakfast  on  board 
early  that  morning.  Four  bananas  was  the  sum  total  of  food  I  had 
been  able  to  get  along  the  way.  My  thighs  trembled  like  the  legs  of  a 
foundering  horse;  more  than  once  my  wobbling  knees  seemed  on  the 
very  point  of  giving  way  beneath  me.  The  rain  had  kindly  held  off 
all  afternoon,  an  unusual  boon  in  Dominica,  but  the  pace  I  was  forced  to 
set  had  so  drenched  me  in  perspiration  that  it  dripped  in  almost  a 
stream  from  the  end  of  my  leather  belt. 

Then  all  at  once,  at  the  top  of  an  ascent  I  had  told  myself  a  score 
of  times  I  could  never  make,  the  lights  of  Roseau  burst  upon  me,  far 
below  yet  seemingly  no  great  distance  away.  There  were  a  few  lights 
in  what  seemed  to  be  the  harbor,  but  not  enough  of  them  to  be  sure 
they  were  those  of  a  passenger-steamer.  Yet  hope  suddenly  stiffened 
my  legs  as  starch  does  a  wilted  collar.  The  town  quickly  disappeared 


THE  CARIBBEE  ISLANDS  355 

again  as  I  plunged  down  a  stony  but  wide  highway  that  had  suddenly 
grown  up  under  my  feet.  Several  times  I  was  convinced  it  led  some- 
where else  than  where  I  hoped,  so  incredibly  interminable  was  the 
descent  to  the  town  that  had  seemed  so  near.  Even  when  I  caught 
sight  of  it  again,  where  the  road  grew  suddenly  level,  it  lay  far  down 
the  coast,  as  far,  it  seemed,  as  it  had  been  from  the  top  of  the  range. 
But  the  steamer  was  still  there.  I  broke  into  a  feeble  run,  for  it  could 
not  possibly  have  been  much  short  of  midnight,  but  fell  back  into  a  walk 
when  my  legs  had  all  but  crumpled  under  me.  Never  had  a  small  town 
seemed  so  interminably  long.  Once  I  passed  a  "  nighthawk "  and 
shouted  a  question  at  him  over  my  shoulder.  "  About  twelve,"  he  re- 
plied, little  suspecting  the  surge  of  despair  his  words  sent  through  me. 
As  luck  would  have  it,  one  boatman  had  remained  at  the  wharf  in  hope 
of  a  belated  shilling.  He  got  two.  I  had  just  begun  to  wring  the 
perspiration  out  of  my  coat  into  my  cabin  washstand  when  a  long 
blast  of  the  siren  and  the  chugging  of  the  engines  told  me  that  we  had 
gotten  under  way. 

Lest  some  ungentle  reader  carry  away  the  impression  that  I  had 
increased  the  slight  disrepute  in  which  Americans  are  held  in  Dominica 
—  for  our  tourists  land  there  frequently  —  may  I  add  that  I  settled 
in  full  all  my  obligations  there  through  the  purser  of  the  steamer  on  its 
return  voyage?  But  to  drop  painful  subjects  and  hark  back  to  that 
other  visit  to  Dominica.  Then  we  left  at  noon,  and  Roseau  settled  back 
into  another  week's  sleep.  There  were  several  pretty  villages  tucked 
away  in  the  greenery  along  the  shore,  some  of  them  with  wide  cobbled 
streets,  though  hardly  a  yard  of  level  ground,  and  each  with  a  church 
just  peering  above  the  fronds  of  the  cocoanuts.  A  highway  crawled 
as  far  as  it  was  able  along  the  coast  beside  us,  but  soon  gave  it  up 
where  the  steep  hills,  looking  like  green  plush,  became  precipitous  moun- 
tains falling  sheer  into  the  sea,  yet  with  low  forests  clinging  everywhere 
to  the  face  of  them.  Bit  by  bit  the  loveliest  of  the  Caribbees,  the  most 
unbrokenly  mountainous  of  the  West  Indies,  shrunk  away  behind  us. 
Tiny  fishing  boats  with  ludicrous  little  pocket-handkerchief  sails  ven- 
tured far  out,  now  standing  forth  against  the  horizon  on  the  crest  of  a 
wave,  now  completely  lost  from  sight  in  a  trough  of  the  sea.  But  by 
this  time  Martinique  was  looming  large  on  the  port  bow,  and  we  were 
straining  our  eyes  for  the  first  glimpse  of  ruined  St.  Pierre. 

St.  Lucia,  largest  of  the  British  Windward  Islands  and  a  bare  twenty- 
five  miles  south  of  Martinique,  is  the  only  one  of  the  Lesser  Antilles 


356  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

where  the  steamer  ties  up  at  the  wharf.  Castries,  the  capital,  is  situ- 
ated on  the  edge  of  what  was  once  a  volcano  crater,  but  presents  little 
else  of  interest  to  those  who  have  seen  its  replica  in  several  of  the  other 
islands.  Like  all  the  group  to  which  it  belongs  politically,  it  was  once 
French  and  still  speaks  a  "  Creole"  jargon  in  preference  to  English. 
It,  too,  is  mountainous,  with  a  Soufriere  that  rises  four  thousand  feet 
into  the  sky,  and  despite  its  thirty-five  by  twelve  miles  of  extent,  its 
population  is  as  scanty  and  as  unprogressive  as  that  of  Dominica. 
The  most  striking  of  its  sights  are  the  two  pitons  at  the  southern  end 
of  the  island,  cone-shaped  peaks  rising  more  than  2500  feet  sheer  out 
of  the  sea,  as  if  they  were  the  surviving  summits  of  a  Himalayan  range 
that  sank  beneath  the  waves  before  the  dawn  of  recorded  history. 

The  next  of  the  stepping-stones  is  St.  Vincent,  for  though  Barbados, 
a  hundred  miles  due  east  of  it,  intervenes  in  the  steamer's  itinerary, 
it  is  neither  geographically,  geologically,  nor  politically  a  member  of  the 
Windward  group.  St.  Vincent  was  the  last  of  the  West  Indies  to  come 
into  possession  of  the  white  man,  for  here  the  fierce  Caribs  offered  their 
last  resistance  and  were  conquered  only  by  being  literally  driven  into 
the  sea.  It  is  ruggedly  mountainous  and  unbrokenly  green  with 
rampant  vegetation,  its  jagged  range  cutting  the  sky-line  like  the  teeth 
of  a  gigantic  saw.  It,  too,  has  its  Soufriere,  which  erupted  on  the 
afternoon  before  Pelee  in  Martinique,  killing  more  than  fifteen  hundred 
and  devastating  one  end  of  the  island.  Rain  falls  easily  on  St.  Vincent, 
and  even  the  capital  is  habitually  humid  and  drenched  with  frequent 
showers.  This  is  named  Kingstown,  and  lies  scattered  along  the  shore 
at  the  foot  of  a  wide  valley  sloping  quickly  upward  to  the  jagged 
labyrinth  of  peaks  about  which  black  clouds  playfully  chase  one 
another  the  year  round.  It  is  a  gawky,  ragged,  rather  insolent  place  of 
unenterprising  negroes,  with  a  few  scrawny  leather-skinned  poor 
whites  scattered  among  them.  Some  of  these  are  of  Portuguese  origin, 
and  there  is  a  scattering  of  East  Indians.  So  colorless  is  the  place, 
except  in  scenic  beauty,  that  the  appearance  of  a  woman  of  Martinique 
in  full  native  regalia  in  its  streets  resembles  a  loud  noise  in  a  deep 
silence.  Even  the  sea  comes  in  with  a  slow,  lazy  swo-ow  among  the 
weather-blackened  fishing  boats  that  lie  scattered  along  its  beach.  So 
quiet  and  peaceful  is  it  everywhere  out  of  sound  of  the  clamoring 
market-place  that  it  would  seem  an  ideal  spot  in  which  to  engage  in 
intellectual  labors,  but  there  is  no  evidence  that  St.  Vincent  has  ever 
enriched  the  world's  art. 


THE  CARIBBEE  ISLANDS  357 

Roads  climb  away  from  the  capital  into  the  pretty,  steep  hills  that 
surround  it,  among  which  are  tucked  red-roofed  estates  and  negro 
cabins.  The  island  looks  more  prosperous  in  the  country  than  in  the 
town.  Its  cotton  is  said  to  be  unsurpassed  for  the  making  of  lace, 
and  was  selling  at  the  time  of  our  visit,  for  $2  a  pound.  In  addition, 
it  produces  cotton-seed  oil,  arrow-root,  cacao,  and,  above  all,  nutmegs. 
The  nutmeg  grows  on  a  tree  not  unlike  the  plum  in  appearance  —  resi- 
dents of  Vermont  have  no  doubt  seen  it  often  —  the  fruit  resembling 
a  small  apricot.  Inside  this  is  a  large  nut  prettily  veined  with  the  red 
mace  that  is  another  of  the  island's  exports,  and  the  nut  being  cracked 
discloses  a  kernel  which,  dried  and  cured,  is  carried  down  from  the 
hills  in  baskets  on  the  heads  of  negroes  and  shipped  to  the  outside 
world  as  the  nutmeg  of  commerce.  The  natives,  if  the  swarthy  West 
Indians  of  to-day  are  entitled  to  that  term,  make  also  pretty  little  cov- 
ered baskets  in  all  sizes,  which  sell  for  far  less  after  the  steamer  has 
blown  her  warning  whistle  than  when  she  has  just  arrived. 

The  eight-hour  run  from  St.  Vincent  to  Grenada,  capital  of  the 
Windward  group,  is  close  to  the  leeward  of  a  scattered  string  of  islands 
called  the  Grenadines,  some  of  them-  comparatively  large,  mountainous 
in  their  small  way,  others  mere  jagged  bits  of  rock  strewn  at  random 
along  the  edge  of  the  Caribbean,  all  of  them  looking  more  or  less  dry 
and  sterile.  Grenada  is  rugged  and  beautiful,  though  it  does  not  rival 
Dominica  in  either  respect.  It  has  variously  been  called  the  "  Isle  of 
Spices,"  the  "  Planter's  Paradise,"  and  the  "  Island  of  Nutmegs." 
What  claims  to  be  the  largest  nutmeg  plantation  on  earth  —  the  West 
Indians  have  something  of  our  own  tendency  for  superlatives  —  lies 
among  its  labyrinth  of  hills;  it  produces  also  cinnamon,  cloves,  ginger, 
and  cacao.  Though  it  is  admittedly  far  more  prosperous  than  St. 
Vincent,  it  shows  few  signs  of  cultivation  from  the  sea,  for  none  of  its 
principal  products  in  their  growing  state  can  be  recognized  from  the 
forest  and  brush  that  cover  many  an  uncleared  West  Indian  isle.  The 
high  prices  paid  for  nutmegs  during  the  war,  particularly  by  fruit  pre- 
servers in  the  United  States,  has  brought  fortunes  to  many  of  its 
planters,  despite  the  fact  that  the  tree  takes  seven  years  to  mature. 
Many  of  the  negroes,  too,  own  their  small  estates  and  increase  their 
incomes  by  making  jelly  from  the  nutmeg  fruit.  Yet  from  the  sea  all 
this  is  hidden  under  a  dense  foliage  that  completely  covers  the  nowhere 
level  island.  Along  the  geometrical  white  line  of  the  beach  are  several 
villages ;  higher  up  are  seen  only  scattered  huts  and  a  few  larger  build- 


358          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

ings,  except  where  the  two  considerable  towns  of  Goyave  and  Victoria 
break  the  pretty  green  monotony. 

But  if  Grenada  must  yield  the  palm  for  beauty  to  some  of  its  neigh- 
bors, St.  Georges,  the  capital,  unquestionably  presents  the  loveliest 
picture  from  the  sea  of  any  port  in  the  Lesser  Antilles,  if  not  of  the 
West  Indies.  Nestled  among  and  piled  up  the  green  hills  that  terminate 
in  a  jagged  series  of  peaks  above,  its  often  three-story  houses  pitched 
in  stages  one  above  the  other,  larger  buildings  crowning  here  and  there 
a  loftier  eminence,  the  whole  delightfully  irregular  and  individualistic, 
it  rouses  even  the  jaded  traveler  to  exclamations  of  pleasure.  The 
steamer  chugs  placidly  by,  as  if  it  had  suddenly  decided  not  to  call, 
passes  a  massive  old  fortress,  then  suddenly  swings  inshore  as  though 
it  had  forgotten  its  limitation  and  aspires  to  climb  the  mountain  heights. 
A  narrow  break  in  the  rock  wall  opens  before  it,  and  it  slides  calmly 
into  a  magnificent  little  blue  harbor  and  drops  anchor  so  close  to  the 
shore  that  one  can  talk  to  the  people  on  it  in  a  conversational  tone. 
Why  the  vessel  does  not  tie  up  to  the  wharf  and  have  done  with  it  is 
difficult  to  understand,  for  the  blue  water  seems  fathoms  deep  up  to  the 
very  edge  of  the  quay.  Strictly  speaking,  it  is  not  a  wharf  at  all,  but 
one  of  the  principal  streets  of  the  town,  and  passengers  in  their  state- 
rooms have  a  sense  of  having  moved  into  an  apartment  just  across  the 
way  from  the  negro  families  who  lean  out  of  their  windows  watching 
with  cheerful  curiosity  the  activity  on  the  decks  below. 

The  sun  was  just  setting  in  a  cloudless  sky  when  we  landed  in  St. 
Georges,  yet  we  saw  enough  of  it  before  darkness  came  to  veil  the  now 
all  too  familiar  negro  slovenliness,  though  it  could  not  disguise  the 
concomitant  odors.  The  same  incessant  cries  for  alms,  the  same  heel- 
treading  throngs  of  guides  marked  our  progress,  until  we  had  shaken 
them  off  in  a  long  tunnel  through  a  mountain  spur  that  connects  the  two 
sections  of  the  water-front.  For  despite  its  distant  loveliness,  the  town 
was  overrun  by  the  half -insolent,  half -cringing  black  creatures  who  so 
mar  all  the  Caribbean  wonderland,  until  one  is  ready  to  curse  the  men 
of  long  ago  who  exterminated  the  aborigines  and  brought  in  their  place 
this  lowest  species  of  the  human  family.  On  shore  St.  Georges  was 
different  only  in  its  steep,  cobbled  streets  and  its  rows  of  houses  piled 
sheer  one  above  another.  Every  other  shop  announced  itself  a  "  Dealer 
in  Cacao  and  Nutmegs."  In  the  clamoring  throngs  of  venders  squatted 
along  the  curb  the  only  unfamiliar  sight  was  the  blue  "  parrot-fish," 
with  so  striking  a  resemblance  to  the  talkative  bird  as  to  be  mistaken 
for  it  at  first  glance.  But  even  here  there  were  evidences  of  Grenada's 


THE  CARIBBEE  ISLANDS  359 

greater  prosperity.  White  men  were  a  trifle  more  numerous ;  numbers 
of  private  automobiles  climbed  away  into  the  hills  by  what  at  least 
began  as  excellent  highways;  a  telephone  line  on  which  we  counted 
seventy-six  wires  disappeared  into  the  interior  over  the  first  crest  behind 
the  town.  Then  a  full  moon  came  up  over  the  fuzzy  hills,  lending  a 
false  beauty  to  many  a  commonplace  old  house-wall,  restoring  the 
romance  to  the  heaped-up  town,  and  flooding  the  world  with  a  silver 
sheen  long  after  we  had  steamed  away  in  the  direction  of  Trinidad. 


CHAPTER  XV 

"  LITTLE   ENGLAND  " 

THE  "  Ancient  and  Loyal  Colony  of  Barbados  "  lies  so  far  out 
to  sea  that  it  requires  a  real  ocean  voyage  to  reach  it.  Low 
and  uninteresting  at  first  glance,  compared  to  many  of  the 
West  Indies,  it  is  by  no  means  so  flat  as  most  descriptions  lead  one  to 
suppose.  Seen  from  the  sea  it  stretches  up  to  a  fairly  lofty  central 
ridge  that  is  regular  from  end  to  end,  except  for  being  a  trifle  serrated 
or  ragged  in  the  center  of  the  island.  Dutch  looking  windmills,  the 
only  survivors  of  the  cane-crushers  that  have  fallen  into  disuse  and  left 
only  the  vine-grown  ruins  of  their  stone  towers  in  all  the  rest  of  the 
Lesser  Antilles,  are  slowly  turning  here  and  there  on  the  even  sky-line. 
Though  the  island  is  entirely  of  coral  and  limestone  formation,  glaringly 
yellow-white  under  the  blazing  sunshine  at  close  range,  there  is  a  sug- 
gestion of  England  in  the  velvety  slopes  of  its  varied-green  fields  as 
seen  from  far  out  in  the  bay.  First  settled  by  the  English  in  1624, 
'it  boasts  itself  the  oldest  British  colony  that  has  remained  unceasingly 
loyal  to  the  crown  and  accepts  with  pride  the  pseudonym  of  "  Little 
England." 

Barbados  has  come  nearer  than  any  other  land  to  solving  the  vexing 
"  negro  problem."  Cultivated  in  all  its  extent,  with  a  population  of 
140,000  negroes  and  20,000  whites  on  a  little  patch  of  earth  twenty-one 
miles  long  and  fifteen  wide,  or  1200  human  beings  to  the  square  mile, 
without  an  acre  of  "  bush  "  on  which  the  liberated  slaves  could  squat, 
the  struggle  for  existence  is  so  intense  that  the  black  man  displays 
here  an  energy  and  initiative  unusual  to  his  race.  The  traveler  hears 
rumours  of  the  Barbadian's  un-African  activity  long  before  he  reaches 
the  island;  he  sees  evidences  of  it  before  his  ship  comes  to  anchor  in 
Carlisle  Bay.  Not  only  is  the  harbor  more  active,  more  crowded  with 
shipping  than  any  other  in  the  Lesser  Antilles,  but  it  has  every  air 
of  a  place  that  is  "  up  on  its  toes."  All  the  languor,  the  don't-care- 
whether-I-work-or-not  of  nature's  favored  spots  are  here  replaced  by  a 
feverish  anxiety  to  please,  an  eager  energy  to  snap  up  any  job  that 
promises  to  turn  a  nimble  shilling.  Scores  of  rowboats  surround 

360 


"  LITTLE  ENGLAND  "  361 

the  steamer  in  a  clamoring  multitude,  their  occupants  holding  aloft 
boards  on  which  are  printed  the  names  of  their  craft  —  unromantic, 
unimaginative  names  compared  to  those  of  the  islands  that  were  once 
or  are  still  French,  such  as  "Maggie,"  "Bridget,"  "  Lillie  White," 
"  Daisy,"  "  Tiger."  In  face  of  the  fierce  competition  the  boatmen 
strive  their  utmost  to  win  a  promise  from  a  passenger  leaning  over  the 
rail,  to  impress  the  name  of  their  craft  on  his  memory  so  that  he  will 
call  for  it  when  he  descends  the  gangway,  to  win  his  good-will  by 
flattery,  by  some  crude  witticism, — "  Remember  the  '  Maggie,'  mistress  ; 
Captain  Snowball  ";  "  The  '  Lillie  White/  my  lady;  upholstered  in  and 
out !  "  "  The  '  Daisy,'  my  gentleman ;  rowboat  extraordinary  to  His 
Majesty !  "  Meanwhile  the  divers  for  pennies,  a  few  girls  among 
them,  are  besieging  the  passengers  from  their  curious  little  flat-bottomed 
boats  of  double  wedge  shape  to  toss  their  odd  coins  into  the  water 
and  "  see  the  human  porpoises  "  display  their  prowess.  Yet,  unlike 
the  pandemonium  in  the  other  islands,  there  is  no  scramble  of  venders 
and  beggars  up  the  gangway  to  the  discomfiture  of  descending  pas- 
sengers; no  crowding  of  boatmen  about  it  fighting  with  one  another 
for  each  possible  fare,  to  the  not  infrequent  disaster  of  the  latter.  A 
bull-voiced  negro  police  sergeant,  in  a  uniform  that  suggests  he  has 
been  loaned  from  the  cast  of  "  Pinafore,"  keeps  perfect  order  from 
the  top  of  the  gangway,  permitting  boats  to  draw  near  only  when 
they  are  called  by  name  and  ruling  the  clamoring  situation  with  an 
iron  hand.  For  there  is  this  difference  between  the  harbor  police  of 
Barbados  and  those  of  all  the  other  ports,  that  they  speak  to  be  obeyed, 
permit  no  argument,  and  if  they  are  not  respected,  they  are  at  least 
duly  feared. 

Bridgetown  was  static.  The  entire  population  was  massed  about  the 
inner  harbor ;  beyond  the  bridge  that  gives  the  town  its  name  stood  an 
immense  new  arch  with  the  words  "  Welcome  to  Barbados "  em- 
blazoned upon  it.  We  thought  it  very  kind  of  them  to  give  us  such 
unexpected  attention,  until  we  discovered  they  were  not  waiting  for 
us  at  all,  but  for  one  whom  some  loyal  but  not  too  well  schooled  Bar- 
badian had  named  in  chalk  on  a  nearby  wall  the  "  Prints  of  Whales." 
This  was  the  first  time  in  half  a  century,  it  seems,  that  a  member  of 
the  royal  family  to  which  the  "  ancient  and  loyal "  little  colony  has 
shown  unbroken  allegiance  had  come  to  visit  it.  The  black  multitude 
was  agog  with  poorly  suppressed  excitement;  white  natives  were 
squirming  nervously;  even  the  few  Englishmen  in  the  crowd  were  so 
thawed  by  the  "epoch-making  event"  that  they  actually  spoke  to 


362          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

strangers.  The  harbor  officer  was  so  eager  to  lose  none  of  it  that  he 
let  us  pass  without  examination ;  an  enterprising  black  youth  won  a 
sixpence  by  finding  us  a  place  on  a  crowded  barge  a  few  yards  from 
the  royal  landing-stage.  The  tramways  had  been  stopped ;  black  troops 
lined  the  vacant  expanse  of  white  main  street  that  stretched  away 
toward  the  government  house.  Nelson's  one-armed  statue  in  Trafal- 
gar Square  had  been  given  an  oil  bath ;  buildings  were  half  hidden  be- 
hind the  fluttering  flags  of  all  the  Allies  —  the  Stars  and  Stripes  rarest 
among  them.  Even  nature  had  contributed  to  the  occasion  by  send- 
ing an  unexpected  little  shower  to  lay  the  white  limestone  dust  that 
habitually  rouses  the  ire  of  new  arrivals.  The  island  newspaper  an- 
nounced a  'special  holiday  in  honor  of  "  the  Prince,  who  will  confer 
upon  the  loyal  inhabitants  of  this  ancient  colony  the  privilege  of  re- 
ceiving a  message  from  his  august  father";  it  still  carried  the  ad- 
vertisements of  the  closed  shops,  imploring  the  citizens  not  only  to 
buy  flags  and  decorations  but  to  "  get  new  clothes  in  honor  of  our 
royal  visitor." 

He  landed  twenty  minutes  after  us.  A  salvo  of  twenty-two  guns 
from  his  battleship  in  the  bay  sent  as  many  gasps  of  excitement  and  de- 
light through  the  eager  multitude.  The  subconscious  thought  came 
to  us  that  it  might  be  better  to  pay  outstanding  war  debts  than  to 
squander  so  much  powder  and  coal,  but  it  ill  behooves  an  American 
of  these  days  to  criticize  our  neighbors  for  squandering  public  funds. 
Besides,  it  is  no  easy  matter  to  keep  up  this  loyalty-to-the-king  busi- 
ness nowadays,  though  England,  surely,  need  have  no  fear  of  changes. 
Then  a  white  launch  dashed  up  the  cheering  inner  harbor,  a  curiously 
boyish-faced  young  man  in  a  gleaming  white  helmet  stepped  briskly 
out  on  the  landing-stage  into  a  group  of  black  policemen  in  speck- 
less  girlish  sailor  suits,  who  seemed  to  lack  an  ostrich  feather  on 
their  round  white  straw  hats,  the  governor  in  full-dress  uniform  and 
the  lord  mayor  in  purple  and  red  robes  bowed  low  over  the  hand 
that  was  proffered,  and  the  prince  and  his  suite  were  whisked  away. 

Black  as  it  was,  we  were  struck  by  the  orderliness  of  the  throng 
—  what  a  pandemonium  such  an  event  would  have  caused  in  the  tem- 
peramental French  islands !  —  and  its  politeness,  compared  to  the 
other  British  West  Indies.  But  if  the  excitement  was  suppressed 
with  British  sternness,  it  was  not  voiceless.  The  brief  glimpse  of 
the  feted  youth  had  aroused  a  thousand  exclamations  like  that  of 
the  ragged  old  negro  woman  behind  us,  "  Oh,  my  God !  Dat  's  he 
himself !  Oh  Christ !  "  On  the  outskirts  of  the  crowd  another  who 


"  LITTLE  ENGLAND  "  363 

had  been  so  lar  away  as  to  have  caught,  at  best,  a  glimpse  of  the  top 
of  the  royal  helmet  was  still  confiding  to  her  surroundings,  "  My 
Jesus,  but  him  good  lookin' ! "  An  old  negro  in  a  battered  derby 
through  which  his  whitening  wool  peered  here  and  there  elbowed  his 
way  through  the  dispersing  crowd  mumbling  to  himself,  "  No  use 
talkin',  it's  de  British  flag  nowadays!"  Farther  on  a  breathless 
market-woman  was  asking  with  the  anxious  tone  of  a  master  of 
ceremonies  who  had  missed  his  train  and  feared  the  worst,  "  Has  my 
gentleman  landed  yet  ?  "  But  the  enthusiasm  was  not  unanimous,  for 
still  another  woman,  who  fell  in  with  us  down  the  street,  asserted, 
"  Even  if  de  prince  landing,  it  all  de  same  for  we  workin'  people. 
De  Prince  Albert  him  landed  fifty  year  ago,  an'  de  school-girls  dat 
fall  wid  de  grandstand  still  hobblin'  about  on  dey  broken  legs." 

The  prince  spent  a  whole  day  in  the  ancient  and  loyal  colony  be- 
fore continuing  his  journey  to  Australia,  most  of  it  in  the  isolation  of 
the  governor's  residence,  but  if  he  carried  away  an  imperfect  picture 
of  this  isolated  fragment  of  the  empire,  he  could  at  least  report  to 
his  "  august  father "  that  it  still  retains  its  extraordinary  loyalty  to 
the  crown. 

Bridgetown  is  very  English,  despite  its  complexion  and  dazzling 
sunshine.  Broken  bottles  embedded  in  the  tops  of  plaster  walls,  which 
everywhere  shut  in  private  property,  shows  that  this,  too,  is  an  over- 
crowded country  where  the  few  who  have  must  take  stern  precau- 
tions against  the  many  who  have  not.  The  streets  bear  such  ultra- 
English  names  as  "  Cheapside,"  "  Philadelphia  Lane,"  "  Literary  Row," 
"  Lightfoot's  Passage,"  "  Whitepark  Road."  The  very  signboards 
carry  the  mind  back  to  England  — "  Grog  Shop  —  The  Rose  of  Devon," 
"  Coals  for  Sale,"  "  Try  Ward's  Influenza  Rum  —  Best  Tonic  " ;  the 
tin  placard  of  some  "  Assurance  Company "  decorates  every  other 
f agade.  Even  the  little  shingle  shacks  in  the  far  outskirts  bear  some  un- 
romantic  name  painted  above  their  doors;  shopkeepers  are  as  insis- 
tent in  giving  their  full  qualifications  as  the  clamoring  boatmen  in  the 
bay.  "  O.  B.  Lawless  —  American  Tailor  —  Late  of  Panama  "  an- 
nounces a  tiny  one-room  hovel.  There  is  a  British  orderliness  of  public 
demeanor  even  among  the  naturally  disorderly  negroes ;  the  women  have 
neither  the  color  sense  nor  the  dignified  carriage  of  their  sisters  of 
Martinique,  rather  the  gracelessness  of  the  English  women  of  the 
lower  classes.  Yet  in  one  thing  Barbados  is  not  English.  It  is 
hospitable,  quite  ready  to  enter  into  conversation  even  with  strangers. 


364          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

When  it  is  not  silent  and  deserted  under  the  spell  of  a  holiday  or 
its  deadly  Sabbath,  Bridgetown  pulsates  with  life.  Its  wharves  are 
as  busy  as  all  those  of  the  rest  of  the  Lesser  Antilles  put  together, 
as  busy  as  our  St.  Thomas  was  before  Barbados  became  the  focal 
point  of  the  eastern  Caribbean.  Bales  and  bundles  and  barrels  and 
boatloads  of  produce  pour  into  it  as  continuously  as  if  every  one  of 
its  160,000  were  wealthy  consumers  of  everything  the  world  has  to 
offer.  Its  own  product  is  constantly  being  trundled  down  to  waiting 
lighters  —  great  hogsheads  of  sugar  or  molasses  carried  on  specially 
designed  iron  frames  on  wheels,  each  operated  by  three  negroes  who 
have  not  lost  the  amusing  childishness  of  their  race  for  all  their  com- 
petition-bred industry,  for  they  invariably  take  turns  in  riding  the 
contrivance  back  to  the  warehouse,  though  the  clinging  to  it  must  re- 
quire far  more  physical  exertion  than  walking.  Steamers,  schooners, 
lighters,  rowboats,  mule-trucks,  auto-*'  lorries  "  are  incessantly  carry- 
ing the  world's  goods  to  and  fro.  Innumerable  horse-carriages,  scores 
of  automobiles,  ply  for  hire.  Excellent  electric-lights  banish  the  dark- 
ness from  all  but  the  poorer  class  of  houses.  Yet  despite  the  constant 
struggle  for  livelihood, —  or  perhaps  because  of  it, —  Bridgetown  has 
little  of  the  insolence  of  the  other  British  West  Indies.  Applicants 
for  odd  jobs  swarm  and  beggars  are  plentiful,  but  the  latter  are  unof- 
fensive  and  the  former  approach  each  possible  client  with  a  "  Do 
you  want  me,  my  gentleman  ?  "  so  courteous  that  one  feels  inclined 
to  think  up  some  imaginary  errand  on  which  to  send  them.  They 
seem  to  recognize  that  politeness  is  an  important  asset  in  their  con- 
stant battle  against  hunger,  which  gives  them  also  a  responsibility,  a 
reliability  in  any  task  assigned  them,  and  a  moderation  in  their  de- 
mands that  is  attained  by  few  other  West  Indians. 

Barbados  has  a  tramway  and  a  railroad,  the  only  ones  between 
Porto  Rico  and  Trinidad.  True,  they  are  modest  little  affairs,  the 
tramcars  being  drawn  by  mules.  Yet  the  latter  step  along  so  lively, 
the  employees  and  most  of  the  passengers  are  so  courteous,  and  over- 
crowding is  so  sternly  forbidden  that  one  comes  to  like  them,  especially 
those  lines  which  rumble  along  the  edge  of  the  sea  in  the  never-fail- 
ing breeze,  above  all  in  the  delightfully  soft  air  of  morning  or  evening. 
It  would  be  difficult  in  these  modern  days  of  indifferent  labor  to 
find  more  courtesy,  more  earnest  efficiency,  and  stricter  living  up  to 
the  rules  than  among  Bridgetown's  tram-drivers  and  conductors,  yet 
their  highest  wage  is  sixty-four  cents  a  day.  But  for  the  war,  the 
system  would  long  since  have  been  electrified:  the  new  rails  have  al- 


"  LITTLE  ENGLAND  "  365 

ready  arrived.  There  is  no  real  reason,  except  civic  pride,  however, 
that  the  mule-cars  should  be  abolished.  They  are  more  reliable  than 
many  an  electric-line  in  larger  cities ;  they  are  a  pleasant  change  to 
the  speed-weary  traveler;  and  the  perfection  with  which  their  extra 
mule  is  hitched  on  at  the  bottom  of  the  one  hill  in  town  and  un- 
hitched again  at  its  summit  without  the  loss  of  a  single  trot  is  a  never- 
ending  source  of  amusement. 

Sojourners  in  Barbados  are  certain  to  make  the  acquaintance  of  at 
least  the  long  tram-line  to  St.  Lawrence.  There  are  plenty  of  hotels 
in  the  town  proper,  but  they  are  habitually  crowded  with  gentlemen 
of  color.  White  visitors  dwell  out  Hastings  way,  some  two  miles  from 
Trafalgar  Square.  Unlike  the  French  and  Spanish  towns  of  tropical 
America,  the  downtown  section  of  the  Barbadian  capital  is  almost 
wholly  given  over  to  business  —  and  negroes.  The  numerous  white 
inhabitants  and  most  of  the  darker  ones  of  any  standing  dwell  in  the 
outskirts.  There  one  may  find  parks  shaded  by  mahogany  and  palm- 
trees,  splendid  avenues  lined  by  one  or  both  of  these  species,  com- 
fortable residences  ranging  all  the  way  from  tiny  "  villas  "  draped  with 
an  ivy-like  vine  or  gorgeous  masses  of  the  bougainvillea  to  luxurious 
estates  in  their  own  private  parks.  Even  the  poorer  classes  in  another 
stratum  still  farther  from  the  center  of  town  dwell  in  neat  little  toy- 
houses  of  real  comfort,  compared  with  the  huts  of  the  masses  of  Haiti 
or  Porto  Rico.  For  miles  along  the  sea  beside  this  longest  tram-line 
one  passes  a  constant  succession  of  comfortable,  light-colored  houses 
with  boxed  verandas,  wooden  shutters  that  raise  from  the  bottom,  and 
a  sort  of  cap  visor  over  the  windows.  In  many  cases  these  boast 
tropically  unnecessary  panes  of  glass  through  which  one  can  make  out 
of  an  evening  interiors  of  perfect  neatness,  homelike,  well  lighted, 
furnished  and  decorated  in  taste,  with  none  of  the  gaudy  and  crowded 
bric-a-brac  to  be  seen  behind  Spanish  rejas  in  the  larger  islands. 

The  night  life  of  Bridgetown  is  worth  a  ride  behind  the  now  weary 
mules,  if  only  to  see  a  negro  urchin  diligently  striving  to  light  a  candle 
in  a  tin  box  on  the  end  of  his  soap-box  cart,  lest  he  be  hauled  up  for 
violation  of  the  ordinance  forbidding  vehicles  to  circulate  after  dark 
without  lamps.  Promptly  at  sunset  the  black  policemen  have  changed 
their  white  helmets  and  jackets  for  German  looking  caps  and  capes. 
On  the  way  downtown  one  passes  half  a  dozen  wide-open  churches  and 
chapels  in  which  black  preachers  are  vociferously  exhorting  their 
nightly  congregations  to  "  walk  in  de  way  of  de  Lard  " ;  one  is  cer- 
tain to  rumble  past  the  shrieking  hubbub  of  a  Salvation  Army  meeting 


366          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

or  two.  There  are  crowds  of  loafers  on  many  a  corner  —  jolly,  in- 
offensive, black  idlers  with  the  spirit  of  rollicking  fun  in  their  ebony 
faces,  bursting  into  howls  of  laughter  at  the  slightest  incident  that 
seems  comical  to  their  primitive  minds.  The  filthy  street-habits  of 
the  French  and  Spanish  islands  are  little  in  evidence,  for  the  police 
of  Barbados  are  as  vigilant  as  they  are  heavy-handed. 

Downtown  the  activities  of  the  day  have  departed.  The  larger 
stores  have  closed  at  four,  the  small  shops  at  sundown.  Only  a 
scattered  score  of  negro  women  squat  in  Trafalgar  Square  before  their 
little  trays  of  peanuts,  bananas,  and  home-made  sweets,  a  wick  torch 
burning  on  a  corner  of  them  whether  they  are  deposited  on  the  ground 
or  are  seeking  lack  of  competition  elsewhere  on  top  of  their  owners' 
heads.  There  is  no  theater  in  Bridgetown;  the  cinema  is  as  sad  a 
parody  on  amusement  as  it  is  everywhere,  but  the  audience  is  worth 
seeing,  once.  The  negroes  sit  in  the  "  pit,"  the  elite,  chiefly  yellow  of 
tint,  in  a  kind  of  church  gallery.  Shouts,  screams,  roof-raising  roars 
of  primitive  laughter,  deafening  applause  whenever  the  frock-coated 
villain  is  undone,  mark  the  unwinding  of  the  film  from  beginning  to 
end;  it  is  a  scene  far  different  from  the  comparative  dignity  of  a 
black  French  audience.  In  the  French  and  Spanish  West  Indies  the 
cinemas  begin  after  nine  and  end  around  midnight ;  in  Barbados  they 
start  sharply  at  seven  and  terminate  at  ten  with  a  rush  for  the  last 
mule-cars,  with  all  but  the  swift  out  of  luck,  and  Bridgetown  settles 
down  to  deathly  Sunday  stillness  while  the  weary  mules  are  still  crawl- 
ing toward  the  end  of  their  laborious  day. 

Or,  if  the  visitor  does  not  care  to  break  up  his  evening  by  descend- 
ing into  town,  there  are  few  more  ideal  spots  in  which  to  hear  a 
band  concert  than  the  little  park  known  as  Hastings  Rocks,  on  the 
very  edge  of  the  sea,  especially  under  a  full  moon.  I  am  an  inveterate 
concert-goer;  one  naturally  becomes  so  in  tropical  America,  where 
other  music  is  so  rare,  and  I  must  confess  a  preference  for  the  Spanish- 
American  type  of  concert  over  the  Anglo-Saxon,  for  the  gay  throngs 
of  promenaders  about  the  sometimes  not  too  successful  attempts  to 
render  a  classical  program  over  the  staid  gatherings  that  listen  mo- 
tionless to  an  uproar  of  "  popular  "  music.  But  even  this  serves  to 
while  away  an  evening  and  seldom  fails  to  offer  a  touch  of  local  color. 
Thus  in  negro-teeming  Barbados  there  is  scarcely  a  suggestion  of 
African  parentage  to  be  seen  at  this  stately  entertainment  on  Hastings 
Rocks.  It  is  partly  the  sixpence  admission  that  keeps  the  negroes 
outside,  but  not  entirely.  Struck  by  the  fact  that  there  was  only  one 


"  LITTLE  ENGLAND  "  367 

mulatto  boy  and  two  light-yellow  girls,  all  very  staid  and  quiet,  on  the 
seaside  benches,  I  sought  information  of  the  negro  gate-keeper.  Yes, 
indeed,  he  refused  admittance  to  most  of  those  of  his  own  color,  and 
to  some  white  people,  too. 

"  You  see,"  he  explained,  "  it  is  like  this.  Perhaps  last  night  you 
might  go  with  a  girl  downtown,  and  then  you  come  here  to-night  with 
your  wife;  and  if  that  girl  allowed  to  come  in  here  she  might  want  to 
get  familiar  and  gossip  with  you.  Or  she  might  giggle  at  you.  We 
can't  have  that,"  he  added,  in  a  tone  that  reminded  one  that  the  Briton, 
even  when  his  skin  is  black,  is  first  cousin  to  Mrs.  Grundy.  The  Eng- 
lish sense  of  dignified  orderliness  and  the  negro's  natural  gaiety,  his 
tendency  to  "  giggle  "  at  inopportune  moments,  do  not  mix  well,  and 
the  Hasting  Rocks  concert  is  one  of  those  places  where  African  hilarity 
must  be  ruthlessly  suppressed. 

Besides  Bridgetown,  with  its  35,000  or  more  inhabitants,  Barbados 
has  a  number  of  what  might  best  be  called  large  collections  of  houses, 
such  as  Speightstown,  Holetown  —  popularly  known  as  "  the  Hole  " — 
and  the  like,  but  its  population,  surpassed  in  density,  if  at  all,  only  by 
China,  a  density  compared  to  which  that  of  Porto  Rico  seems  slight 
indeed,  is  spread  so  evenly  over  all  the  island  that  it  is  hard  to  tell 
where  a  town  begins  or  ends.  The  island  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
instances  of  coral  formation.  Comparatively  flat,  when  likened  to 
most  of  the  West  Indies,  it  consists  of  a  number  of  stages  or  platforms 
that  have  been  built  one  after  the  other  as  the  island  rose  slowly 
and  gradually  from  the  sea  to  a  height,  at  one  point,  of  nearly  1200 
feet.  When  first  discovered  it  was  surrounded  by  mangrove  swamps 
and  tangled,  rotting  vegetation,  but  all  this  has  since  turned  to  solid 
ground.  The  coral  of  which  it  is  built  contains  some  ninety  per  cent, 
of  lime,  so  that  almost  the  whole  island  might  be  reduced  to  powder 
in  a  lime-kiln.  The  rest  of  it  consists  of  a  species  of  sandstone  known 
as  "  Scotland  rock,"  which  comes  to  the  surface  in  the  northwestern 
part  of  the  island. 

Thanks  to  its  geological  formation,  the  close  network  of  roads  which 
reaches  every  corner  of  Barbados,  as  well  as  all  its  bare  open  spaces, 
are  glaringly  white  and  hard  on  the  eyes,  especially,  if  one  may  judge 
by  the  prevalence  of  glasses  among  them,  those  of  the  white  and 
"  high  yellow "  inhabitants.  Yet,  for  the  same  reason,  it  is  perhaps 
the  most  healthful  of  the  West  Indies.  It  has  no  swamps  to  breed 
malaria ;  the  trade  winds  from  the  open  ocean  sweep  incessantly  across 


368          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

it.  Once  it  was  troubled  with  typhoid,  but  the  establishment  df  a 
single  unpolluted  water  supply  for  the  whole  island  has  done  away 
with  this  danger.  There  is  great  equability  of  temperature  day  or 
night  the  year  round.  The  wet  season,  from  June  to  October,  is  less 
so  than  in  most  tropical  lands ;  though  visitors  and  European  inhabitants 
complain  of  the  midday  heat,  except  in  December  and  January,  it  is 
always  cool  compared  to  midsummer  in  the  United  States.  Fresh,  dry, 
and  constantly  laden  with  ocean  ozone,  it  is  a  climate  that  makes  little 
demand  upon  the  strength  and  vital  powers.  All  indications  point  to 
the  fact,  however,  that  it  is  no  place  for  white  women  as  permanent 
residents,  for  virtually  without  exception  they  grow  scrawny,  nervous, 
and  weak-eyed,  their  pasty  complexions  sprayed  with  freckles  under 
their  veils. 

All  roads  lead  to  Bridgetown,  but  to  follow  them  in  the  opposite 
direction  to  any  chosen  point  is  not  so  simple  a  matter.  Signboards 
are  almost  unknown,  no  doubt  being  considered  a  superfluity  in  so 
small  and  crowded  a  community.  The  country  people,  though  will- 
ing enough,  are  often  too  stupid  to  give  intelligible  directions,  though 
they  make  up  for  this  by  a  persistency  in  showing  one  the  way  in  per- 
son which  no  amount  of  protest  can  overcome.  Ask  a  question  or  give 
them  any  other  slightest  excuse  to  do  so,  and  they  will  cling  to  the 
white  pedestrian's  heels  for  miles  in  the  hope  of  picking  up  a  penny  or 
a  "  bit,"  always  taking  their  leave  with,  "  I  beg  you  for  a  cent,  sir." 
Indeed,  that  is  the  constant  refrain  everywhere  along  the  dazzling  but 
excellent  highways.  Women  and  men  shout  it  from  the  doors  of 
their  little  cabins;  children  scamper  after  one,  the  black  babies  are 
egged  on  by  their  elders  as  soon  as  they  can  toddle,  each  shrieking  the 
invariable  demand  in  a  tone  of  voice  which  suggests  that  refusal  is 
impossible.  They  seem  to  fancy  that  white  strangers  cross  the  island 
for  no  other  purpose  than  to  distribute  a  cartload  of  English  coppers 
along  the  way.  Almost  as  incessant  are  the  demands  upon  the  kodak- 
carrier  to  "  Make  me  photo,  sir,"  or,  "  Draw  me  portrait,  master." 

On  week-days  the  highways  of  Barbados  are  as  crowded  as  city 
streets.  Heavy  draft  horses  and  mules,  auto-trucks  large  and  small, 
are  constantly  descending  to  Bridgetown  with  the  cumbersome  hogs- 
heads of  sugar  and  molasses,  or  returning  with  supplies  for  the 
estates.  There  is  an  endless  procession  of  almost  toy-like  carts,  each 
drawn  by  a  single  small  donkey,  the  two  wheels  habitually  wobbly, 
the  name,  address,  and  license  number  of  the  owner  in  crude  letters 
on  the  front  of  the  diminutive  box.  The  donkey  is  the  invariable  beast 


"  LITTLE  ENGLAND  "  369 

of  burden  of  the  Barbadian  of  the  masses.  He  carries  to  town  the 
products  of  little  gardens;  he  brings  the  supplies  of  the  innumerable 
small  shops  throughout  the  island ;  the  country  youth  takes  his  "  girl " 
riding  in  his  donkey-cart;  in  later  years  the  whole  ebony  family  packs 
into  it  for  a  jolt  across  the  country.  Unlike  the  rest  of  tropical  Amer- 
ica, Barbados  does  not  ride  its  donkeys  or  use  them  as  pack-animals ; 
nor,  to  all  appearances,  are  they  abused.  Centuries  of  British  training 
seems  to  have  given  the  black  islanders  a  compassion  rare  among 
their  neighbors.  Horesmen  and  pack-mules  are  likewise  unknown 
along  the  white  highways;  oxen  are  rare;  pedestrians  are  much  less 
numerous  than  one  would  expect  in  so  populous  a  community,  while 
bicycles  are  as  widely  in  use  as  in  England. 

There  is  a  curiously  English  homelikeness  about  the  landscape, 
which,  if  it  is  seldom  rugged,  is  by  no  means  monotonous.  Every 
acre  of  ground  is  utilized;  forbidding  stone-and-mud  walls  topped  by 
spikes  or  broken  glass  line  the  roads  for  long  distances ;  villages,  or  at 
least  houses,  are  so  continuous  that  one  is  almost  never  out  of  human 
sight  or  sound.  Coral  is  so  abundant  and  wood  so  expensive  that 
immense  limestone  steps  often  lead  up  to  tiny  wooden  shacks,  as  out 
of  proportion  to  their  foundations  as  statues  to  their  pedestals.  The 
majority  of  the  rather  well-kept  little  negro  cabins,  however,  are 
simply  set  up  on  small  blocks  of  coral  at  the  four  corners.  More  than 
one  band  of  hilarious  sailors  from  visiting  battleships  have  amused 
themselves  by  removing  one  of  these  props  and  tumbling  a  Barbadian 
family  out  of  their  beds  in  the  small  hours  of  the  night. 

Shopkeeping  might  almost  be  called  the  favorite  sport  of  the  "  Bade- 
yan  " ;  the  lack  of  jobs  enough  to  go  round  has  led  so  many  to  adopt 
this  means  of  winning  a  possible  livelihood  that  the  island  has  been 
called  "  Over-shopped  Barbados."  Everywhere  wayside  shanties  bear 
the  familiar  black  sign  with  white  letters,  varying  only  in  name  and 
number:  "  Percival  Brathwaite  —  Licensed  Seller  of  Liquors  —  No. 
765."  Inside,  perhaps  behind  a  counter  contrived  from  a  single 
precious  board,  are  a  few  crude  shelves  stocked  mainly  with  bottles 
of  rum  or  with  cheap  "  soft  drinks,"  a  few  shillings'  worth  of  uninvit- 
ing foodstuffs  flanking  them.  The  Barbadians  have  long  been  known 
as  the  "  Yankees  of  the  West  Indies."  They  are  far  more  diligent 
merchants  than  most  natives  of  tropical  America,  so  much  so  that 
neither  the  Chinese,  Jews,  Portuguese,  nor  Syrians,  so  numerous  in 
the  other  islands,  can  compete  with  them  to  advantage.  But  their 
knowledge  of  book-keeping  is  scanty,  and  it  is  often  only  the  visible 


370          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

end  of  his  light  resources  that  convinces  the  petty  shopkeeper  that  he 
is  losing,  rather  than  gaining  at  the  popular  pastime. 

Every  little  way  along  the  island  roads  other  shanties  bear  the  sign 
of  this  or  that  "  Friendly  Society."  These  are  a  species  of  local  in- 
surance company  or  mutual  benefit  association.  The  negroes  pay  into 
them  from  three  pence  to  a  shilling  a  week, —  some  of  the  poorer 
neighbors  nothing  at  all, —  and  receive  in  return  sickness  or  accident 
benefits,  or  have  their  funeral  expenses  paid  in  case  of  death.  But 
they  are  typically  tropical  or  African  in  their  indifference  to  a  more 
distant  to-morrow,  for  at  the  end  of  each  year  the  remaining  funds  are 
divided  among  those  members  who  have  not  drawn  out  more  than  they 
paid  in,  and  with  perhaps  as  much  as  five  dollars  each  in  their  pockets 
the  society  indulges  in  a  hilarious  "  blow-out."  Equally  numerous  are 
the  signboards  of  "  agents  "  of  the  undertakers  of  Bridgetown.  They 
do  not  believe  in  waiting  for  the  sickle  of  Father  Time,  those  death- 
bed functionaries  of  the  capital,  but  drum  up  trade  with  Barbadian 
energy.  The  island's  newspaper  habitually  carries  their  enticing  pleas 
for  clients : 

"  OUR  DEAD  MUST  BE  BURIED,"  begins  one  of  these  appeals. 
"  In  the  SAD  HOUR  why  trouble  yourself  over  the  Dead  when  you 
can  see  E.  T.  ARCHER  GITTENS,  the  up-to-date  and  experienced 
UNDERTAKER  face  to  face?  Look  for  the  Hearse  with  the 
GOLDEN  ANGEL!"  There  follows  a  "poem"  of  twenty-four 
verses  setting  forth  the  advantages  of  being  buried  by  Gittens  and 
ending  with  the  touching  appeal: 

Just  take  a  ride  to  Tweedside  Stable 
And  you  '11  see  that  this  is  no  Fable. 
Phone  281  night  or  day 
And  you  '11  hear  what  Gittens  has  to  say. 
He  and  his  staff  are  always  on  hand 
To  accommodate  any  class  of  man. 

"All  orders  will  be  promptly  executed  at  MODERATE  PRICES. 
A  TRIAL  WILL  CONVINCE." 

No  doubt  it  would. 

The  Barbados  government  railway  —  one  could  not  call  it  a  rail- 
road in  so  English  a  community  —  is  an  amusing  little  thing  twenty 
years  old  and  some  two  hours  long,  though  that  does  not  mean  as  much 
in  miles  as  one  might  expect.  On  week-days  its  passenger-train  some- 
times makes  a  one-way  journey,  at  a  cost  of  four  shillings  and  six- 


"  LITTLE  ENGLAND  "  371 

pence  for  first  and  two  shillings  for  second-class  travelers,  but  on  Sun- 
days it  indulges  in  the  whole  round  trip.  From  the  station  near  the 
famous  bridge  from  which  the  capital  takes  its  name,  the  little  train 
tears  away  as  if  excited  at  its  own  importance,  through  slightly  roll- 
ing cane-fields,  rocky  white  coral  gullies,  past  frequent  Dutchy  wind- 
mills flailing  their  shadows  on  the  ground.  Vistas  as  broad  as  if  it 
were  crossing  a  continent  instead  of  a  tiny  parcel  of  land  flung  far 
out  into  the  ocean,  spread  on  either  hand,  that  to  the  right  flat  and 
almost  desertlike  in  its  aridity,  the  north  broken  in  rugged  low  ridges, 
with  many  scattered  villages  and  gray  heaps  of  sugar-mills  on  their 
crests.  The  soil  is  so  thin  one  marvels  that  it  will  grow  anything, 
yet  every  acre  of  it  shows  signs  of  constant  cultivation,  the  long  ex- 
panses of  cane  broken  here  and  there  by  small  patches  of  corn,  cas- 
sava, yams,  and  the  sweet  potatoes  on  which  the  mass  of  the  popula- 
tion depends  for  nourishment.  Every  few  minutes  the  train  halts 
at  a  station  seething  with  cheerful  black  faces;  everywhere  it  crosses 
white  coral  roads,  some  of  them  cut  deep  down  through  the  lime- 
stone ridges.  Trees  are  almost  plentiful,  but  they  all  show  evidence 
of  having  been  planted.  The  Spanish  discoverers,  it  is  said,  gave  the 
island  its  present  name  because  its  forests  were  bearded  (barbudos) 
with  what  is  known  in  our  southern  states  as  "  Spanish  moss,"  but 
this,  like  the  original  woods,  has  long  since  disappeared. 

Sunday  is  as  dead  as  it  can  only  be  in  a  British  community.  The 
cattle  and  mules  stand  in  the  corrals  eating  dry  cane-tops;  the  square 
brick  chimneys  of  the  boiling-houses  emit  not  a  fleck  of  smoke.  Only 
in  rare  cases  even  are  the  windmills  allowed  to  work,  though  for  some 
reason  nature  does  not  shut  off  the  bracing  trade-wind.  This  is  so 
constant  that  it  forces  all  the  branches  of  the  trees  to  the  southwest, 
until  even  the  royal  palms  seem  to  be  wearing  their  hair  on  one  side. 
Fields  brown  with  cut  cane-tops  contrast  with  the  pale  green  of  those 
still  unharvested;  the  general  sun-flooded  whiteness  of  the  landscape 
is  painful  to  the  eyes.  Here  and  there  is  a  patch  of  blackish  soil,  but 
it  has  the  vigorless  air  of  having  long  been  overworked,  a  looseness 
as  of  volcanic  lava. 

In  less  than  an  hour  the  Atlantic  spreads  out  on  the  horizon  ahead. 
Rusty  limestone  cliffs,  a  jagged  coral  coast  against  which  the  sea  dashes 
itself  as  if  angry  at  the  first  resistance  it  encounters  since  passing  the 
Cape  Verde  Islands  many  hundred  miles  away,  stretch  out  to  the 
north  and  south.  We  come  out  to  the  edge  of  it,  fifty  feet  above, 
then  descend  to  a  track  so  close  to  the  surf  that  the  right  of  way  must 


372          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

be  braced  up  with  old  rails.  It  is  a  dreary,  barren-dry,  brown-yellow 
coast,  yet  of  a  beauty  all  its  own,  with  its  chaotic  jumble  of  huge  rocks 
among  which  hundreds  of  negroes  are  bathing  stark  naked  and  spout- 
ing holes  out  of  which  the  thundering  surf  dashes  high  into  the  air. 
Farther  north  the  landscape  grows  almost  mountainous,  but  we  have 
already  reached  Bathsheba,  where  Sunday  travelers  habitually  dis- 
embark, leaving  the  train  to  crawl  on  alone  to  a  few  tiny  oil-wells 
around  the  next  rugged  promontory. 

I  climbed  the  sheer  cliff  a  thousand  feet  high  above  Bathsheba, 
its  face  covered  with  brown  grasses,  ferns,  creeping  plants,  and  the 
smaller  species  of  palm  that  cling  to  each  projecting  rock  as  if  their 
available  nourishment  were  as  scanty  and  precious  as  that  of  the 
teeming  human  population.  The  view  from  the  summit  forever  ban- 
ishes the  notion  that  Barbados  is  flat.  All  "  Scotland,"  as  the  northern 
end  of  the  island  is  called,  is  laid  out  before  you,  broken  and  pitched 
and  jumbled  until  it  resembles  the  Andes  in  miniature.  White  rib- 
bons of  roads  and  a  network  of  trails  are  carelessly  strewn  away 
across  it,  hundreds  of  huts  are  scattered  over  its  chaotic  surface,  and 
an  immense  building  stands  forth  on  the  summit  of  its  highest  hill. 
Jagged,  gray-black  sandstone  boulders  of  gigantic  size  contrast  with 
the  white  limestone  to  give  the  tumbled  scene  the  aspect  of  having 
been  left  unfinished  by  the  Builder  of  the  western  hemisphere  in  his 
hurry  to  cross  the  Atlantic.  Below,  this  scene  spreads  away  to  in- 
finity, its  scalloped,  foam-lashed  shore  clear-cut  in  the  dry,  luminous 
atmosphere  as  far  as  the  eye  can  see  in  either  direction.  Behind,  the 
picture  is  tamer,  though  by  no  means  level.  Rolling  cane-fields,  with 
here  and  there  a  royal  palm,  numerous  clusters  of  huts,  and  the  ubi- 
quitous chimneys  and  windmills  of  sugar-factories  breaking  the  sky- 
line, stretch  endlessly  away  to  the  yellow-brown  horizon. 

I  returned  to  Bridgetown  on  foot  —  he  who  still  fancies  the  island 
is  level  and  tiny  should  walk  across  it  on  a  blazing  Sunday  afternoon 
—  passing  not  more  than  a  score  of  travelers  on  the  way.  Once  I 
paused  to  chat  with  a  group  of  "  poor  whites,"  as  they  call  themselves, 
or  what  their  black  neighbors  refer  to  as  "  poor  buckras  "  or  "  red 
legs."  These  reminders  of  our  own  "  crackers "  are  numerous  in 
Barbados,  especially  in  the  "  Scotland  "  district.  They  are  descendants 
of  the  convicts  or  prisoners  taken  in  the  civil  wars  of  England  during 
the  Commonwealth  or  the  Duke  of  Monmouth's  rebellion.  Chiefly 
Scotch  and  Irish,  some  of  them  royalists  of  the  nobility,  they  were 
sent  to  the  island  by  Cromwell  between  1650  and  1660  and  sold  to  the 


"  LITTLE  ENGLAND  "  373 

planters  for  1500  pounds  of  sugar  a  head.  It  is  doubtful  whether 
any  of  them  would  be  worth  that  now.  Branded  and  mutilated  to  pre- 
vent their  escape,  treated  more  brutally  than  the  blacks  by  whom  they 
are  held  in  contempt  to  this  day,  they  steadily  declined  in  health  and 
spirits  until  their  present  descendants,  with  the  exception  of  the  few 
who  rose  to  be  planters,  are  listless  and  poverty-stricken,  degenerate 
victims  of  the  hookworm  and  of  intermarriage.  The  original  pris- 
oners wore  kilts ;  hence  the  tropical  sun  soon  won  them  the  nickname 
of  "  red  legs,"  which  has  persisted  to  this  day,  perhaps  because  their 
bare  feet  have  still  a  distinctly  ruddy  tinge.  But  their  faces  are  corpse- 
like  in  color  and  their  bodies  thin  and  anemic.  Of  the  adults  in  this 
group,  not  one  had  more  than  a  half  dozen  crumbling  fangs  in  the 
way  of  teeth. 

Yet  they  seemed  moderately  well-informed  and  of  far  quicker  in- 
telligence than  the  sturdier  blacks  who  so  despise  them.  Their  air 
of  honest  simplicity  acquitted  them  of  any  suggestion  of  boasting 
when  they  asserted  that  the  "  poor  whites  "  never  steal  cane  and  other 
growing  crops,  the  theft  of  which  by  the  negroes,  despite  heavy  penal- 
ties, is  one  of  the  curses  of  the  island.  The  chief  topic  of  conversa- 
tion, nevertheless,  was  that  inevitable  post-war  one  the  world  over,  the 
high  cost  of  food.  Coffee,  their  principal  nourishment,  they  took 
nowadays  without  sugar,  and  though  it  had  sold  at  sixteen  cents  a 
pound  when  the  war  ended,  it  was  now  forty.  Rice,  sweet  potatoes, 
meal,  even  breadfruit,  "  the  staff  of  Barbados,"  had  trebled  in  price. 
Their  "  spots,"  as  they  call  their  gardens,  were  constantly  being  robbed 
by  the  negroes.  It  was  no  use  trying  to  keep  a  goat  or  a  sheep ;  some 
black  thief  was  sure  to  carry  it  off. 

I  succeeded  at  length  in  bringing  up  the  matter  of  education.  They 
sent  their  boys  to  the  public  schools,  but  it  was  not  safe  to  send  the 
girls.  There  were  elementary  schools  in  every  parish,  where  each 
pupil  paid  a  penny  a  week.  The  teachers  were  nearly  all  men  and  all 
were  colored.  In  the  higher  public  schools,  which  an  average  tuition 
of  $72  a  year  put  out  of  reach  for  most  of  them,  the  teachers  were 
usually  Englishmen;  but  the  color-line  was  drawn  only  in  the  private 
schools,  of  which  there  were  plenty  for  those  who  could  afford  them. 
While  they  talked  I  noted  that  the  enmity  between  the  two  races  was 
camouflaged  under  an  outward  friendliness ;  the  greetings  between  the 
group  of  "  red  legs  "  and  the  black  passers-by  had  a  heartiness  of  tone 
that  might  easily  have  deceived  an  unenquiring  observer. 

One  of  the  sights  of  Barbados  is  the  large,  old,  gray  stone  Anglican 


374          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

church  in  each  of  the  eleven  parishes.  Their  erection  was  decreed 
way  back  in  the  days  when  the  Earl  of  Carlisle,  having  a  superior 
"  pull "  with  the  King  of  England,  ousted  Sir  William  Courteen  as 
founder  of  the  colony.  They  are  as  English  in  their  sturdy  bulkiness, 
with  their  heavy  crenelated  stone  towers  and  the  replica  of  an  English 
country  churchyard  about  each  of  them,  despite  the  difficulty  of  digging 
graves  in  hard  limestone,  as  the  English  sparrows  which  flock  about 
the  neighboring  cane-fields.  The  Anglicans,  having  gotten  in  on  the 
ground  floor,  have  almost  a  monopoly  in  the  island,  though  other  de- 
nominations have  no  great  difficulty  in  establishing  their  claims  to  en- 
dowments. The  Catholics,  of  whom  there  are  barely  a  thousand,  have 
only  one  small  church.  Even  the  shouting  sects  seem  to  have  less 
popularity  among  the  Barbadians  than  in  most  negro  communities. 
Religion  is  reputed  the  true  bulwark  of  the  social  order  in  Barbados, 
but  it  is  rather  because  the  long  established  churches  serve  to  main- 
tain the  class  distinctions  on  which  this  is  based  than  because  they 
succeed  in  holding  the  negroes  up  to  any  particularly  high  standard 
of  morals.  Mrs.  Grundy  is  strongly  entrenched  in  all  the  British  West 
Indies,  but  her  influence  is  rather  superficial  among  the  black  masses, 
who  have  a  considerable  amount  of  what  other  races  call  the  "  hypo- 
crisy "  of  the  Anglo-Saxon. 

But  Sunday  is  no  time  to  see  Barbados.  I  walked  entirely  across  the 
island  without  meeting  one  donkey-cart,  so  numerous  on  week-days. 
There  was  scarcely  a  wheeled  vehicle  in  all  the  long  white  vista  of 
highways,  except  a  rare  bicycle  and  the  occasional  automobile  of  a 
party  of  American  tourists.  Pedestrians  were  as  rare ;  the  people 
were  everywhere  shut  in  behind  their  tight-closed  wooden  shutters,  a 
few  of  them  singing  hymns,  most  of  them  sleeping  in  their  air-tight 
cabins.  The  few  I  roused,  out  of  mere  curiosity,  treated  the  annoy- 
ance as  something  bordering  on  the  sacrilegious.  Nowhere  was  there 
a  group  under  the  trees;  never  a  picnic  party;  not  a  sign  of  any  one 
enjoying  life.  Bridgetown  itself,  compared  to  the  swarming  uproar 
of  the  "  prince's  day,"  was  as  a  graveyard  to  carnival  time. 

With  the  dawn  of  Monday,  however,  the  island  awakens  again  to 
its  feverish  activity,  and  one  may  easily  catch  an  auto-truck  across  the 
floor-flat,  dusty  plain  stretching  some  five  miles  inland  from  the  capital 
and  drop  off  on  the  breezy  higher  shelves  of  the  island.  Something 
of  interest  is  sure  to  turn  up  within  the  next  mile  or  two. 

The  Barbadian,  for  instance,  digs  his  wells  not  to  get  water,  but  to 


"  LITTLE  ENGLAND  "  375 

get  rid  of  it.  They  are  to  be  found  everywhere,  often  at  the  very 
edge  of  the  highway  and  always  open  and  unprotected.  They  are  big 
round  holes  cut  far  down  into  the  jagged  coral  rock,  splendid  places, 
it  would  seem,  into  which  to  throw  something  or  somebody  for  which 
one  has  no  use.  This  is  exactly  their  purpose,  for  they  are  designed 
to  carry  off  the  floods  of  the  rainy  season.  Barbados  has  no  rivers 
and  no  lakes,  or  rather,  these  are  all  underground,  some  of  them  in 
immense  caverns.  In  former  days  the  mass  of  the  population  de- 
pended for  its  water  supply  on  shallow,  intermittent  ponds,  the  better 
class  on  private  arrangements.  Now  two  central  pumping  stations 
and  more  than  a  hundred  miles  of  underground  pipe  furnish  the  entire 
island  with  excellent,  if  hike-warm,  water  from  the  unseen  rivers. 
Instead  of  the  roadside  shrines  of  the  French  islands,  the  limestone 
embankments  of  Barbadian  highways  have  faucets  at  frequent  in- 
tervals. Water  is  free  to  those  who  fetch  it  from  these.  The  better 
class  residents  are  everywhere  supplied  by  private  pipes  at  a  nominal 
sum  per  house.  Business  places  pay  thirty  cents  per  thousand  gal- 
lons, which  is  considered  so  expensive  that  only  one  estate  on  the 
island  is  irrigated  though  drought  is  frequently  disastrous  in  the  west 
and  south. 

The  stodgy  windmills  everywhere  fanning  the  air  are  used  exclu- 
sively for  the  grinding  of  cane.  It  is  a  rare  patch  of  landscape  that 
does  not  show  at  least  half  a  dozen  of  these  toiling  away  six  days  of 
the  week.  The  fact  that  they  have  survived  in  Barbados,  of  all  the 
\Yest  Indies,  may  be  as  much  due  to  its  unfailing  trade  wind  as  to  the 
crowded  conditions  which  make  the  innovation  of  labor-saving  devices 
so  unpopular.  Methods  long  since  abandoned  elsewhere  are  still  in 
vogue  in  Barbadian  sugar-mills.  The  cane  is  passed  by  hand  between 
the  iron  rollers  in  the  stone  windmill  tower.  The  big  hilltop  yard  about 
this  is  covered  with  drying  bagasse,  or  cane  pulp,  which  is  finally 
heaped  up  about  the  boiling-house  in  which  it  serves  as  fuel.  The 
juice  runs  in  open  troughs  from  the  windmill  to  this  latter  building, 
where  it  is  strained  and  left  to  settle  until  the  scum  rises  to  the  surface. 
Then,  this  being  skimmed  off,  it  is  boiled  in  open  copper  kettles.  A 
negro  watches  each  of  them,  dipping  out  the  froth  now  and  then 
with  a  huge  soup-ladle  and  tossing  the  boiling  liquid  into  the  air  when 
it  shows  signs  of  burning.  Toward  the  end  of  the  process  the 
"  sugar-master  "  is  constantly  trying  the  syrup  between  a  finger  and 
thumb,  in  order  to  tell  when  the  crystals  are  forming  and  when  to 
"  strike  "  the  contents  of  the  kettle,  which  must  be  done  at  the  right 


376          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

moment  if  the  sugar  is  to  be  worth  shipping.  From  beginning  to 
end  the  work  is  done  by  hand,  and  a  Barbadian  sugar-mill  has  little 
resemblance,  except  in  its  pungently  sweet  odor,  to  the  immense  centrals 
of  Cuba. 

In  the  early  days  the  sugarmen  had  much  trouble  in  transporting 
their  product  because  of  the  deep  gullies  and  bad  roads.  Once  upon 
a  time  camels  were  used,  but  though  they  answered  the  purpose 
splendidly,  being  very  sure-footed  and  capable  of  carrying  the  price 
of  a  "  red  leg  "  each,  they  died  for  lack  of  a  proper  diet.  To  this  day 
Barbadian  sugar  or  molasses  is  shipped  in  the  cumbersome  no-gallon 
hogsheads  which  were  adopted  in  the  days  of  camels,  though  the  haul- 
ing is  now  done  on  mule  or  auto-trucks. 

With  an  unlimited  supply  of  cheap  labor,  it  is  natural  that  the  Bar- 
badian planters  should  cling  to  the  old  processes.  Indeed,  the  estate 
owner  who  attempts  to  bring  in  new  machinery  is  heartily  criticized 
by  his  competitors,  while  the  establishment  of  new  mills  is  out  of  the 
question,  there  being  already  too  many  factories  for  the  available  acre- 
age. The  sugar  planters,  nine  out  of  ten  of  whom  are  as  white  as  the 
Anglo-Saxon  can  be  after  many  generations  of  tropical  residence,  hold 
all  Barados,  leaving  only  the  steeper  hillsides  and  the  less  fertile  patches 
as  "  spots "  on  which  the  "  red  legs "  and  the  negroes  plant  their 
yams,  arrowroot,  sweet  potatoes,  and  cassava.  They  live  in  luxurious 
old  manor  houses,  usually  on  high  knolls  overlooking  their  not  par- 
ticularly broad  acres,  half-hidden  in  groves  of  mahogany-trees,  which 
are  protected  by  law  from  destruction.  With  few  exceptions  they 
are  the  descendants  of  English  colonists,  and  still  keep  the  British 
qualities  their  ancestors  brought  with  them,  keep  them  so  tenaciously 
that  in  some  ways  they  are  more  English  than  the  modern  Englishman 
himself.  There  are  suggestions  that  they  are  as  short-sighted  as  most 
conservatives  in  taking  the  last  ounce  of  advantage  of  the  crowded 
conditions  to  keep  the  laboring  masses  at  ludicrously  low  wages. 
Molasses,  which  the  Barbadians  call  "  syrup,"  has  advanced  from  seven 
cents  to  a  dollar  a  gallon  in  the  past  few  years,  yet  the  planters  are  still 
paying  about  a  shilling  per  hundred  "  holes  "  of  cane,  making  it  im- 
possible for  the  hardest  workers  to  earn  more  than  "two  and  six  " 
a  day,  though  the  prices,  even  of  the  foodstuffs  grown  on  the  island, 
have  nearly  all  trebled.  The  pessimists  foresee  trouble  and  cite  the 
continual  presence  of  a  battleship  in  Barbadian  waters  as  proof  that 
even  the  government  fears  it.  But  though  they  constitute  only  one 
eighth  of  the  population  and  the  percentage  is  steadily  decreasing, 


"  LITTLE  ENGLAND  "  377 

the  whites  have  always  ruled  in  Barbados.  As  early  as  1649  the 
slaves  planned  to  kill  them  all  off,  and  kept  the  secret  of  the  conspiracy 
so  well  that  it  would  probably  have  succeeded  but  for  a  servant  who 
gave  the  planters  warning  on  the  eve  of  the  attack.  In  1816  there 
came  another  fierce  negro  rebellion,  which  was  put  down  with  an  iron 
hand.  Since  then  the  blacks  have  been  given  little  real  voice  in  the 
government,  despite  their  overwhelming  majority,  and  the  traveler 
of  to-day  finds  Barbados  the  one  island  of  the  British  West  Indies  in 
which  the  negroes  are  not  beginning  to  "  feel  their  oats." 

Some  attribute  the  patent  difference  between  the  Barbadian  and 
other  negroes  of  the  western  hemisphere  to  his  origin  in  Sierra  Leone, 
while  the  rest  came  from  the  Kru  or  the  Slave  Coast,  but  there  is  little 
historical  evidence  to  support  this  contention.  Still  others  credit  his 
superior  energy  and  initiative  to  the  absence  of  malaria  in  the  island. 
Most  observers  see  in  those  qualities  merely  a  proof  that  the  negro 
develops  most  nearly  into  a  creditable  member  of  society  under  phys- 
ical conditions  which  require  him  either  to  work  or  starve.  Whoever 
is  right,  the  fact  remains  that  Barbados  is  one  of  the  few  places  where 
emancipation  was  not  disastrous,  and  that  the  Barbadians  are  probably, 
on  the  whole,  the  most  pleasant  mannered  people  in  the  West  Indies, 
if  not  in  the  western  hemisphere.  Except  for  rare  cases  of  rowdy- 
ism, they  are  always  courteous,  yet  without  cringing.  Even  those  in 
positions  bringing  them  into  official  contact  with  the  public  are,  as  is 
too  often  the  reverse  in  many  another  country,  extremely  obliging, 
cheerful,  yet  never  patronizing,  rarely  brusk,  yet  efficient  and  prompt, 
fairly  true  to  their  promises,  for  a  tropical  country,  and  have  little 
of  that  aggressive  insolence  which  is  becoming  so  wide-spread  among 
the  negroes  in  our  own  country  and  the  other  British  West  Indies. 
The  crowded  condition  of  the  country  evidently  makes  the  constant 
meeting  of  people  a  reason  to  cut  down  friction  to  the  minimum,  while 
the  necessity  of  earning  a  livelihood  where  work  is  scarce  leads  them 
to  be  careful  not  to  antagonize  any  one. 

That  they  are  amusing  goes  without  saying.  The  magnificent  black 
"  bobby  "  in  his  white  blouse  and  helmet,  for  instance,  does  not  reply 
to  your  query  about  the  next  tramway  with,  "  Coin'  to  Hastings  ? 
Better  geta  move  on  then,"  but  with  a  mellifluous,  "  Ah,  your  destina- 
tion is  Hastings?  Then  you  will  be  obliged  to  proceed  very  rapidly; 
otherwise  you  are  in  danger  of  "being  detained  a  half-hour  until  the 
next  ear  departs."  Yet  they  are  not  a  people  that  grows  upon  one. 
A.S  with  all  negroes,  there  is  a  shallowness  back  of  their  politeness,  <=. 


378          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

something  which  reminds  you  every  now  and  then  that  they  have  no 
history,  no  traditions,  no  ancient  culture  —  such  as  that  which  is  ap- 
parent, for  instance,  in  the  most  ragged  Hindu  coolie  —  behind  them. 
Small  as  it  is,  there  are  many  more  points  of  interest  in  Barbados. 
There  is  Speightstown,  for  example,  where  whaling  is  still  sometimes 
carried  on ;  Holetown,  with  its  monument  to  the  first  English  colonists ; 
a  marvelous  view  of  all  the  ragged  Atlantic  coast  from  the  parish 
churchyard  of  St.  John's,  in  which  lies  buried  a  descendant  of  the 
Greek  emperors  who  was  long  its  sexton;  Mt.  Hillaby,  the  highest 
point  of  the  island,  from  which  one  may  look  down  upon  all  the  chaotic 
jumble  of  hills  in  St.  Andrew's  Parish,  better  known  as  "  Scotland," 
or  in  the  south  the  broad,  parched  flatlands  of  Christ  Church,  the  only 
one  of  the  eleven  parishes  not  named  for  some  saint  of  the  Anglican 
calendar.  Or  there  is  amusement,  at  least,  among  the  huts  tucked  away 
into  every  jagged  coral  ravine,  in  noting  the  curious  subterfuges  adopted 
to  wrest  a  livelihood  from  an  overburdened  and  rather  unwilling  soil. 
Every  acre  of  the  island  being  under  cultivation,  there  is,  of  course, 
no  hunting;  wild  animals  are  unknown,  except  for  a  few  monkeys  in 
Turner's  Woods.  These  are  rarely  seen,  for  so  human  have  they  be- 
come in  their  own  struggle  for  existence  that  they  post  a  guard  when- 
ever they  engage  in  their  forays  and  flee  at  his  first  intimation  of 
danger.  Negro  boys  earn  a  penny  or  two  a  day  for  keeping  the 
monkeys  off  the  cane-fields.  There  being  no  streams  or  lakes,  the 
island  has  no  disciples  of  Isaac  Walton,  but  the  Barbadians  are  in- 
veterate fishermen,  for  all  that.  Time  was  when  the  little  boats  which 
are  constantly  pushing  out  to  sea  in  water  so  clear  that  one  may  see 
every  crevice  of  the  coral  bottom  sixty  feet  below  brought  back  more 
fish  than  the  island  could  consume.  Then  one  might  buy  a  hundred 
flying-fish  for  a  penny;  to-day  these  favorites  of  the  Barbadian  table 
cost  as  high  as  two  pence  each,  while  the  equally  familiar  dolphins 
cost  twice  that  a  pound.  "  Sea  eggs,"  which  are  nothing  more  or  less 
than  the  sea-urchin  of  northern  waters,  are  a  standard  dish  in  this 
crowded  community,  for  the  same  reason,  perhaps,  that  the  French 
have  discovered  the  edible  qualities  of  snails. 

Barbados  is  the  only  foreign  land  ever  visited  by  the  father  of  our 
country.  In  the  winter  of  1751-52,  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century  be- 
fore the  Revolution,  Captain  George  Washington,  then  adjutant  gen- 
eral of  Virginia  at  one  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  a  year,  accompanied 
his  brother  on  a  journey  in  quest  of  his  health.  Major  Lawrence 


"  LITTLE  ENGLAND  "  379 

Washington  of  the  British  army,  owner  of  Mt.  Vernon,  fourteen  years 
older  than  George,  had  been  suffering  from  consumption  since  he 
served  in  the  expedition  against  Cartagena  in  South  America.  They 
sailed  direct  to  Barbados,  then  a  famous  health  resort,  by  schooner. 
The  skipper  must  have  been  weak  on  navigation,  for,  says  George's 
journal,  "  We  were  awakened  one  morning  by  a  cry  of  land,  when  by 
our  reckonings  there  should  have  been  none  within  150  leagues  of  us. 
If  we  had  been  a  bit  to  one  side  or  the  other  we  would  never  have 

noticed  the  island  and  would  have  run  on  down  to "  the  future 

father  of  our  country  does  not  seem  to  have  a  very  clear  idea  just  where. 
In  fact,  school-marms  who  have  been  holding  up  the  hatchet- wielder 
as  a  model  for  their  pupils  —  unless  some  millionaire  movie  hero  has 
taken  his  place  in  the  hearts  of  our  young  countrymen  nowadays  — 
will  no  doubt  be  horrified  to  learn  that  George  was  not  only  weak  in 
geography,  but  even  in  spelling.  He  frequently  speaks  of  "  fields  of 
cain,"  for  instance,  and  sometimes  calls  his  distressing  means  of  con- 
veyance a  "  scooner,"  or  a  "  chooner."  But  let  him  speak  for  himself : 

Nov.  4,  1751  —  This  morning  received  a  card  from  Major  Clark  welcoming  us 
to  Barbadoes,  with  an  invitation  to  breakfast  and  dine  with  him.  We  went  — 
myself  with  some  reluctance,  as  the  small  pox  was  in  the  family.  Mrs.  Clark 
was  so  much  indisposed  [the  italics  are  mine]  by  it  that  we  had  not  the  pleasure 
of  her  company.  Spent  next  few  days  writ*  letters  to  be  carried  by  the  Chooner 
Fredericksburg  to  Virginia. 

Thursday  8th.  Came  Capt"  Crofton  with  his  proposals  which  tho  extrava- 
gantly dear  my  Brother  was  obliged  to  give.  £15  pr  Month  is  his  charge  exclu- 
sive of  Liquors  &  washings  which  we  find.  In  the  evening  we  remov'd  some  of 
our  things  up  and  ourselves;  it's  pleasantly  situated  pretty  near  the  sea  and  ab* 
a  mile  from  the  Town,  the  prospective  agreable  by  Land  and  pleasant  by  Sea 
as  we  command  the  prospect  of  Carlyle  Bay  &  all  the  shipping  in  such  a  manner 
that  none  can  go  in  or  out  with  out  being  open  to  our  view. 

The  Washingtons  evidently  lived  near  the  same  spot  now  inhabited 
by  American  tourists,  any  two  of  whom  would  be  only  too  happy  nowa- 
days to  pay  forty-three  dollars  a  month  for  board  and  lodging, 
"  Liquor "  or  no  liquor.  Capt.  Crofton,  the  rascally  profiteer,  must 
have  made  a  small  fortune  out  of  his  "  paying  guests,"  for  they  were 
always  being  invited  out  to  meals  at  the  "  Beefstake  &  Tripe  Club  " 
or  elsewhere.  Church  members,  however,  will  be  glad  to  see  the  next 
entry,  despite  of  that  unhappy  break  about  the  "  Liquor  " : 

Sunday  nth.  Dressed  in  order  for  Church  but  got  to  Town  too  Late.  [What 
man  ever  kept  his  sense  of  time  in  the  tropics?]  Went  to  Evening  Service. 


380  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

Thursday  15th.  Was  treated  with  a  play  ticket  to  see  the  Tragedy  of  George 
Barn  well  acted.  [George,  you  see,  was  no  money-strewing  tourist.  But  then, 
he  was  not  an  American  in  those  days.] 

Saturday  I7th.  Was  strongly  attacked  with  the  small  Pox  sent  for  Dr.  Lana- 
han  whose  attendance  was  very  constant  till  my  recovery  and  going  out  which 
was  not  'till  thursday  the  I2th  December. 

December  I2th.  Went  to  Town  visited  Maj.  Clarke  (who  kindly  visited  me 
in  my  illness  and  contributed  all  he  cou'd  in  send'g  me  the  necessary's  required 
by  ye  disorder). 

Kind  of  him,  surely,  after  his  other  little  contribution  to  "  ye  dis- 
order "  in  the  shape  of  that  first  invitation.  The  only  real  result  of  the 
Washingtons'  trip  to  Barbados  was  that  our  first  President  was  pock- 
marked for  life,  for  Lawrence  got  no  good  out  of  the  trip.  George 
went  back  to  Virginia  and  Lawrence  to  Bermuda,  where  he  grew 
steadily  worse,  and  finally  went  home  to  die  at  Mt.  Vernon  the  follow- 
ing summer  bequeathing  the  estate  to  his  younger  brother. 

Washington  speaks  constantly  in  his  journal  of  the  hospitality  of 
Barbados.  That  characteristic  remains  to  this  day,  where  it  is  car- 
ried to  an  extreme  unknown  in  England  and  rarely  in  the  United 
States.  Of  all  the  Lesser  Antilles,  one  leaves  Barbados,  perhaps, 
with  most  regret. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

TRINIDAD,   THE   LAND  OF  ASPHALT 

AS  his  steamer  drops  anchor  far  out  in  the  immense  shallow 
of  the  Gulf  of  Paria,  the  traveler  cannot  but  realize  that  at 
last  he  has  come  to  the  end  of  the  West  Indies  and  is  en- 
croaching upon  the  South  American  continent.  The  "  Trinity "  of 
fuzzy  hills,  to-day  called  the  "  Three  Sisters,"  for  which  Columbus 
named  the  island  have  quite  another  aspect  than  the  precipitous  vol- 
canic peaks  of  the  Lesser  Antilles.  Plump,  placid,  their  vegetation 
tanned  a  light  brown  by  the  now  truly  tropical  sun,  they  have  a  strong 
family  resemblance  to  the  mountains  of  Venezuela  hazily  looming  into 
the  sky  back  across  the  Bocas.  Fog,  unknown  among  the  stepping- 
stones  to  the  north,  hangs  like  wet  wool  over  all  the  lowlands,  along 
the  edge  of  the  bay.  The  trade  wind  that  has  never  failed  on  the  long 
journey  south  has  given  place  to  an  enervating  breathlessness ;  by  seven 
in  the  morning  the  sun  is  already  cruelly  beating  down ;  instead  of  the 
clear  blue  waters  of  the  Caribbean,  the  vast  expanse  of  harbor  has 
the  drab,  lifeless  color  of  a  faded  brown  carpet.  Sail-boats,  their 
sails  limply  aslack  as  they  await  the  signal  to  come  and  carry  off  the 
steamer's  cargo,  give  the  scene  a  half -Oriental  aspect  that  recalls 
the  southern  coast  of  China. 

There  is  little,  indeed,  to  excite  the  senses  as  the  crowded  launch 
plows  for  half  an  h6ur  toward  the  uninviting  shore.  Seen  from  the 
harbor,  Port  of  Spain,  with  its  long  straight  line  of  wharves  and  ware- 
houses, looks  dismal  in  the  extreme,  especially  to  those  who  have  left 
beautiful  St.  Georges  of  Grenada  the  evening  before.  Yet  from  the 
moment  of  landing  one  has  the  feeling  of  having  gotten  somewhere 
at  last.  The  second  in  size  and  the  most  prosperous  of  the  British 
West  Indies  may  be  less  beautiful  than  the  scattered  toy-lands  border- 
ing the  Caribbean,  but  a  glance  suffices  to  prove  it  far  more  progres- 
sive. Deceived  by  its  featureless  appearance  from  the  sea,  the  traveler 
is  little  short  of  astounded  to  find  Port  of  Spain  an  extensive  city, 
the  first  real  city  south  of  Porto  Rico,  with  a  beauty  of  its  owi*  un- 
suggested  from  the  harbor.  Spread  over  an  immense  plain  sloping 


382          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

ever  so  slightly  toward  the  sea,  with  wide,  right-angled,  perfect  asphalt 
streets,  electric-cars  as  up-to-date  as  those  of  any  American  city  cover- 
ing it  in  every  direction,  and  having  most  of  the  conveniences  of 
modern  times,  it  bears  little  resemblance  to  the  backward,  if  more 
picturesque,  "  capitals  "  of  the  string  of  tiny  islands  to  the  north.  The 
insignificant  "  Puerto  de  los  Espafioles,"  which  the  English  found  here 
when  they  captured  the  island  a  mere  century  and  a  quarter  ago,  was 
burned  to  the  ground  in  1808;  another  conflagration  swept  it  in  1895, 
so  that  the  city  of  to-day  has  a  sprightly,  new-built  aspect,  despite 
the  comparative  flimsiness  of  its  mainly  wooden  buildings.  There 
are  numerous  imposing  structures  of  brick  and  stone,  too,  along  its 
broad  streets,  and  many  splendid  residences  in  the  suburbs  stretching 
from  the  bright  and  ample  business  section  to  the  foot  of  the  encircling 
hills. 

Long  before  he  reaches  these,  however,  the  visitor  is  sure  to  be 
struck  by  the  astonishing  variety  of  types  that  make  up  the  population. 
Unlike  that  of  the  smaller  islands,  the  development  of  Trinidad  came 
mainly  after  African  slavery  was  beginning  to  be  frowned  upon,  and 
though  the  negro  element  of  its  population  is  large,  the  monotony  of 
flat  noses  and  black  skins  is  broken  by  an  equal  number  of  other 
racial  characteristics.  Large  numbers  of  Chinese  workmen  were  im- 
ported in  the  middle  of  the  last  century;  Hindu  coolies,  indentured 
for  five  years,  were  introduced  in  1839,  and  though  the  Government 
of  India  has  recently  forbidden  this  species  of  servitude,  fully  one 
third  of  the  inhabitants  are  East  Indians  or  their  more  or  less  full 
blooded  descendants.  Toward  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  large 
numbers  of  French  refugees  took  up  their  residence  in  Trinidad,  and 
the  island  to-day  has  more  inhabitants  of  this  race  than  any  of  the 
West  Indies  not  under  French  rule.  Many  of  the  plantation-owners 
are  of  this  stock,  improvident  fellows,  if  one  may  believe  the  rumors 
afloat,  who  mortgage  their  estates  when  times  are  hard.  Then,  instead 
of  paying  their  debts  when  the  price  of  sugar  and  cacao  make  them 
temporarily  rich,  they  go  to  Europe  "  on  a  tear."  Martinique  and 
Guadeloupe  have  also  sent  their  share  of  laborers,  and  there  are  sec- 
tions of  Trinidad  in  which  the  negroes  are  as  apt  to  speak  French  as 
English.  Portuguese,  fleeing  persecution  in  Madeira,  added  to  this 
heterogeneous  throng,  while  Venezuelans  are  constantly  drifting  across 
the  Bocas  to  increase  the  helter-skelter  of  races  that  makes  up  the 
island's  present  population. 

All  this  mixture  may  be  seen  in  a  single  block  of  Port  of  Spain. 


TRINIDAD,  THE  LAND  OF  ASPHALT  383 

Here  the  stroller  passes  a  wide-open,  unfurnished  room  where  tur- 
banned  Hindus  squat  on  their  heels  on  the  bare  floor,  some  with  long 
shovel-beards  through  which  they  run  their  thin,  oily  fingers,  some  in 
the  act  of  getting  their  peculiar  hair-cuts,  nearly  all  of  them  smoking 
their  curious  tree-shaped  pipes,  all  of  them  chattering  their  dialects 
in  the  rather  'effeminate  voices  of  their  race.  On  the  sidewalk  outside 
are  their  women,  in  gold  nose-rings  varying  in  size  from  mere  buttons 
to  hoops  which  flap  against  a  cheek  as  they  walk,  silver  bracelets  from 
wrists  to  elbows,  anklets  clinking  above  their  bare  feet,  the  lobes  of 
their  ears  loaded  down  with  several  chain-links,  as  well  as  earrings, 
their  bare  upper  arms  protruding  from  the  colorful  cheap  shrouds  in 
which  they  wrap  themselves,  a  corner  of  it  thrown  over  their  bare 
heads.  There  are  wide  diversities  of  type,  even  of  this  one  race.  Here 
a  group  of  Madrassis',  several  degrees  blacker  than  the  others,  is 
stretched  out  on  another  unswept  floor,  there  a  Bengalee  squats  in  a 
doorway  arranging  his  straight  black  hair  with  a  wooden  comb.  Mo- 
hammedans and  Brahmins,  sworn  enemies  throughout  the  island  as  at 
home,  pass  each  other  without  a  sign  of  recognition.  Men  of  different 
castes  mingle  but  slightly,  despite  the  broadening  influence  of  foreign 
travel;  they  have  one  and  all  lost  caste  by  crossing  the  sea,  but  all  in 
equal  proportion,  so  that  their  relative  standing  remains  the  same.  The 
influence  of  their  new  environment  has  affected  them  in  varying  degrees. 
Two  men  alike  enough  in  features  to  be  brothers,  the  one  in  an  elaborate 
turban,  loose  silky  blouse,  and  a  flowing  white  mass  of  cloth  hitched 
together  between  his  legs  in  lieu  of  trousers,  the  other  in  a  khaki  suit 
and  a  Wild  West  felt  hat,  stand  talking  together  in  Hindustanee. 
Wromen  in  nose-rings,  bracelets,  and  massive  silver  necklaces  weighing 
several  pounds  are  sometimes  garbed  in  hat,  shirt-waist,  and  skirt,  some- 
times even  in  low  shoes  with  silver  anklets  above  them. 

Next  door  to  these  groups,  or  alternating  between  them,  is  a  family 
of  the  same  slovenly,  thick-tongued,  jolly  negroes  who  overrun  all  the 
West  Indies.  The  difference  in  color  between  these  and  the  Hindus, 
even  the  swarthy  Madrassis,  is  striking;  the  one  is  done  in  charcoal, 
the  other  in  oil  colors.  As  great  is  the  contrast  between  the  coarse 
features  of  the  Africans  and  those  of  the  East  Indians,  so  finely  modeled 
that  they  might  be  taken  for  Caucasians,  except  for  their  mahogany 
complexions.  Even  in  manners  the  two  races  are  widely  separated. 
While  the  negro  is  forward,  fawningly  aggressive,  occasionally  insolent, 
the  Hindus  have  a  detached  air  which  causes  them  never  to  intrude 
upon  the  passer-by,  even  to  the  extent  of  a  glance.  They  might  be 


384          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

blind  in  so  far  as  any  evidence  of  attention  to  the  other  races  about 
them  goes.  Abutting  the  negro  residence  is  perhaps  a  two-story  house 
with  a  long  perpendicular  signboard  in  Chinese  characters,  a  shop  below, 
a  residence  above,  with  many  curious  Celestial  touches.  Then  comes 
a  building  placarded  in  Spanish,  "  Venezuelans  very  welcome,"  where 
not  a  word  of  English  is  spoken  by  the  whole  swarming  family.  On 
down  the  street  stretch  all  manner  of  queer  mixtures  of  customs,  cos- 
tumes, races,  language,  and  names.  Sing  How  Can  keeps  a  provision 
shop  next  to  Diogenes  Brathwaite's  "  Rum  Parlor,"  flanked  on  the 
other  side  by  Rahman  Singh,  the  barber,  who  in  his  turn  is  shut  in  by 
the  leather  sandal  factory  of  Pedro  Vialva.  Women  in  the  striking 
costume  of  the  French  islands  stroll  past  with  a  graceful,  dignified 
carriage ;  a  man  in  a  red  fez  pauses  to  talk  to  a  man  with  a  veritable 
clothshop  wound  about  his  head.  Negro  Beau  Brummels  speaking  a 
laboriously  learned  English  with  an  amusing  accent,  stately  black  police- 
men in  spotless  white  jackets  and  helmets  and  those  enormous  shoes, 
shining  like  the  proverbial  "  nigger's  heel,"  worn  by  all  British  negroes 
in  uniform,  solemnly  swinging  their  swagger-sticks  with  what  suggests 
the  wisdom  of  the  ages  until  a  chance  question  discloses  how  stupid  they 
are  under  their  impressive  and  patronizingly  polite  manner;  now  and 
then  a  disgruntled  Venezuelan  general  whom  Castro  or  Gomez  has 
forced  to  seek  an  asylum  under  the  Union  Jack ;  a  pair  of  sallow  shop- 
keepers sputtering  their  nasal  Portuguese  —  all  mingle  together  in  the 
passing  throng.  Then  there  are  intermixtures  of  all  these  divergent 
elements,  mainly  of  the  younger  generation  —  a  negro  boy  with  almond 
eyes,  a  youth  who  looks  like  a  Hindu  and  a  Chinaman,  but  is  really 
neither,  a  flock  of  children  with  unusually  coarse  East  Indian  features 
and  woolly  hair  playing  about  a  one-room  shop-residence  the  walls  of 
which  are  papered  negro-fashion  with  clippings  from  illustrated  news- 
papers ;  farther  on  a  Portuguese  rum-seller  with  a  mulatto  baby  on  his 
knee ;  a  few  types  who  look  like  conglomerations  of  all  the  other  races, 
until  their  family  trees  must  sound  like  cocktail  recipes.  Both  the 
Chinese  and  the  Hindu  residents  of  Trinidad  are  thrifty;  many  of 
them  are  well-to-do,  for  the  former  have  indefatigable  diligence  in  their 
favor,  and  the  latter,  who  neither  gamble  nor  steal,  have  no  very  serious 
faults,  except  the  tendency  to  carve  up  their  unfaithful  wives.  But 
there  are  failures  among  both  races,  even  in  this  virgin  island.  Out- 
casts who  were  once  Hindu  or  Chinese,  sunk  now  to  indescribable  filth 
and  raggedness,  slink  about  with  an  eye  open  for  a  stray  crust  or 
cigarette  butt.  Under  the  samun  trees  in  Marine  Square  East  Indian 


TRINIDAD,  THE  LAND  OF  ASPHALT  385 

derelicts  dressed  in  nothing  but  a  clout,  a  ragged  jacket  sometimes 
dropped  in  a  vermin-infested  heap  beside  them,  are  sleeping  soundly 
on  the  stone  pavement  upon  which  white  men,  sipping  their  cocktails 
in  the  Union  Club,  look  down  as  placidly  as  if  they  were  gazing  out 
the  windows  along  Piccadilly. 

Modern  street-cars  carry  this  racial  hash,  or  as  much  of  it  as 
can  afford  to  ride,  about  the  well-paved  city  and  its  shady  suburbs. 
Single  car-tickets  cost  six  cents,  but  a  strip  of  six  may  be  had  for  a 
shilling.  So  many  citizens  are  unable  to  invest  this  latter  sum  all  at 
once,  however,  that  numerous  shopkeepers  add  to  their  profits  by  sell- 
ing the  strip  tickets  at  five  cents  each.  Port  of  Spain  has  perhaps  the 
finest  pair  of  lungs  of  any  city  of  its  size  in  the  world.  Beyond  the 
business  section  is  an  immense  savanna,  smooth  as  a  billiard-table  — 
magnificent,  indeed,  it  seems  to  the  traveler  who  has  seen  no  really  level 
open  ground  for  weeks  —  called  Queen's  Park.  Here  graze  large  herds 
of  cattle,  half  Oriental,  too,  like  the  people.  There  is  ample  playground 
left,  too,  for  all  the  city's  population.  In  the  afternoon,  particularly 
of  a  Saturday,  it  presents  a  vast  expanse  of  pastimes  seldom  seen  in 
the  tropics.  The  warning  cry  of  "  Fore !  "  frequently  startles  the  mere 
stroller,  only  to  have  his  changed  course  bring  him  into  a  cluster  of 
schoolboys  shrilly  cheering  the  prowess  of  their  respective  teams.  The 
game  which  outdoes  all  others  in  popularity  is  that  to  the  American 
incredibly  stupid  one  of  cricket,  which  rages  —  or  should  one  say 
languishes  ?  —  on  every  hand,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  Trinidad  is 
within  ten  degrees  of  the  equator.  Nor  is  it  monopolized  by  the  better 
classes,  for  every  group  of  ragged  urchins  who  can  scrape  together 
enough  to  get  balls,  wickets,  and  that  canoe-paddle  the  English  call  a 
"  bat "  takes  turns  in  loping  back  and  forth  across  the  grass,  to  what 
end  the  scorer  knows.  If  there  is  a  color-line  on  the  savanna,  it  is  be- 
tween the  few  pure  whites,  many  of  them  Englishmen  who  have  "  come 
out "  within  the  present  century  and  brought  all  the  unconscious  snob- 
bishness of  their  own  island  with  them,  and  the  olla  podrida  of  all  the 
other  races.  Among  the  latter  the  lines  are  social,  rather  than  racial, 
so  that  Hindu-mulatto-Chinese  youths,  leaning  on  their  canes,  gaze 
with  scornful  indifference  upon  other  youths  of  similar  labyrinthian 
parentage  whom  chance  has  not  raised  to  the  dignity  of  annexing  collars 
to  their  shirts.  But  there  is  room  enough  for  all  on  the  immense 
savanna. 

Here  and  there  it  is  dotted  with  huge,  spreading  trees,  which  grow 
more  thickly  in  the  residential  section  surrounding  it.  The  original 


386          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

inhabitants  called  the  island  "  le're,"  or."  Cairi,"  meaning  the  "  land  of 
humming-birds."  It  is  still  that,  but  it  is  also  the  land  of  magnificent 
trees  and  the  land  of  asphalt.  One  may  doubt  whether  any  fragment 
of  the  globe  has  so  high  a  percentage  of  perfect  streets  and  roads  —  no 
wonder,  surely,  when  it  may  have  its  asphalt  in  unlimited  quantities  for 
the  mere  digging  —  and  the  giants  of  the  forest  which  everywhere 
spread  their  canopies  give  its  rather  placid  landscape  a  beauty  which 
makes  up  for  its  lack  of  ruggedness.  Behind  Queen's  Park  is  a  delight- 
fully informal  botanical  garden  in  the  middle  of  which  sits  the  massive 
stone  residence  of  the  governor.  Several  times  a  week  a  band  concert 
is  given  on  his  front  lawn,  a  formality  bearing  slight  resemblance  to  the 
Sunday-night  gathering  in  a  Spanish-American  plaza.  It  takes  place 
in  the  afternoon  and  is  attended  only  by  the  elite,  though  this  does  not 
by  any  means  confine  it  to  Caucasian  residents,  for  there  are  many 
others,  at  least  of  the  island-born  Chinese  and  Hindus  and  their  inter- 
mixtures, who  count  themselves  in  this  category,  while  negro  and  East 
Indian  nursemaids  are  constantly  pursuing  their  overdressed  charges 
across  the  noiseless  greensward.  Any  evidence  of  human  interest  is 
sternly  suppressed  in  the  staid  and  orderly  gathering.  They  sit  like 
automatons  on  their  scattered  chairs  and  benches,  no  one  ever  commit- 
ting the  faux  pas  of  speaking  above  a  whisper.  Woe  betide  the  mere 
American  who  dares  address  himself  to  a  stranger,  for  British  snobbery 
reaches  its  zenith  in  Trinidad,  and  the  open-handed  hospitality  of  Bar- 
bados is  painfully  conspicuous  by  its  absence. 

Trim  lawns  bordered  with  roses,  hibiscus,  poinsettia,  variegated 
crotons,  and  a  host  of  other  brilliant-foliaged  plants  surround  the  home- 
like, though  sometimes  overdecorated,  residences  of  the  generously 
shaded  suburbs.  Over  the  verandas  hang  mantles  of  pink  coronella, 
violet  thumbergia,  red  bougainvillea,  often  interlacing,  always  a  mass 
of  bloom,  at  least  in  this  summer  month  of  April.  Maidenhair  ferns 
line  the  steps  leading  to  the  portico,  rare  orchids  cling  to  the  mammoth 
branches  of  the  spreading  trees,  the  air  is  sweetly  fragrant  with  the 
odors  of  cape  jasmine  and  the  persistent  patchouli.  With  sunset  cigales, 
tree-toads,  and  a  host  of  tropical  insects  begin  to  chirrup  their  nightly 
chorus  —  an  improvement  on  the  flocks  of  crowing  roosters  that  make 
the  whole  night  hideous  in  the  town  itself,  not  only  in  Port  of  Spain, 
but  throughout  the  West  Indies. 

A  magistrate's  court  is  an  amusing  scene  in  any  of  the  Antilles; 
it  is  doubly  so  in  the  racial  whirlpool  of  Trinidad.  An  English  "  leften- 
ant,"  assigned  the  task  of  prosecuting  for  the  crown,  but  who  never  once 


TRINIDAD,  THE  LAND  OF  ASPHALT  387 

opened  his  mouth,  was  the  only  white  man  present  on  the  morning  I 
visited  this  farcical  melodrama.  A  mulatto  magistrate  whose  offensive 
pride  of  position  stuck  out  on  him  like  a  sore  thumb  held  the  center 
of  the  spotlight.  Never  did  he  let  pass  an  opportunity  to  inflict  the 
crudest  of  witticisms,  the  most  stupid  of  sarcasm  on  prisoners  and  wit- 
nesses alike.  In  the  language  of  English  courts  he  was  known  as 
"  Your  Worship,"  a  title  by  which  even  white  men  are  frequently  com- 
pelled to  address  those  of  his  class  in  the  British  West  Indies,  where 
the  law  knows  no  color-line.  A  group  of  colored  reporters  sat  below 
him  in  the  customary  railed  enclosure,  jotting  down  his  every  burst  of 
alleged  wit  for  the  delectation  of  their  next  morning's  readers,  who 
would  be  regaled  with  such  extraordinary  moral  truths  as  "  His  Wor- 
ship told  the  defendant  that  instead  of  living  off  his  mother  and  sister  he 
should  go  and  do  some  honest  work  to  support  them  and  himself,"  or 
"  His  Worship  remarked  that  the  witness  seemed  to  be  afflicted  with  a 
clogging  of  his  usually  no  doubt  brilliant  mental  processes."  Beyond 
the  rail  was  packed  the  black  audience  that  is  never  lacking  at  these 
popular  entertainments  in  the  British  West  Indies. 

The  prisoners  and  the  two  pedestal-shod  black  policemen  on  either 
side  of  them,  stood  stiffly  at  attention  just  outside  the  rail  during  all  the 
trial.  Witnesses  assumed  a  similar  posture  in  a  kind  of  pulpit,  took 
the  oath  by  kissing  a  dirty  dog-eared  Bible  —  even  though  they  were 
Hindus  or  Chinese  —  and  submitted  themselves  to  "  His  Worship's  " 
caustic  sarcasm.  The  mere  fact  that  the  majority  of  them  were 
patently  and  clumsily  lying  from  beginning  to  end  of  their  testimony  did 
not  appear  to  arouse  a  flicker  of  surprise  in  the  minds  of  magistrate, 
the  lawyers  of  like  color,  or  the  open-mouthed  audience.  The  testi- 
mony in  each  case  Avas  laboriously  written  down  in  longhand  by  a 
dashingly  attired  mulatto  clerk,  though  evidently  not  word  for  word, 
for  these  fell  too  fast  and  furiously  to  be  caught  in  full.  The  accused 
was  always  given  permission  to  cross-examine  the  witnesses,  with  the 
result  that  a  vociferous  quarrel  frequently  enlivened  the  proceedings. 
The  majority  of  cases  were  petty  in  the  extreme,  matters  which  in  most 
countries  would  have  been  settled  out  of  court  with  a  slap  or  a  swift 
kick.  But  nothing  so  pleases  the  British  West  Indian,  at  least  of  the 
masses,  as  a  chance  to  appear  in  the  conspicuous  role  of  plaintiff,  or 
even  as  witness.  One  black  fellow  had  charged  another  with  calling 
his  wife  a  "  cat."  "  His  Worship  "  found  the  case  a  source  of  unlimited 
platitudes  before  he  dismissed  it  by  adding  five  shillings  to  the  crown's 
resources.  A  fat  negress  accused  a  long  and  scrawny  one  of  offering 


388          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

to  "box  me  face,"  and  as  British  Wesj:  Indian  law  takes  account  of 
threats,  the  lanky  defendant  was  separated  from  her  week's  earnings, 
though  she  scored  high  with  the  audience  by  proving  that  the  accuser 
had  also  used  threatening  language,  thereby  subjecting  her  to  a  similar 
financial  disaster. 

Corporal  punishment  is  still  in  vogue  in  the  British  Antilles.  Two 
negro  boys  had  been  playing  marbles,  when  one  struck  the  other  with  a 
stick.  "  His  Worship  "  ordered  the  defendant  to  receive  ten  strokes 
with  a  tamarind  rod,  to  be  administered  by  a  member  of  the  police  force. 
The  order  was  immediately  executed  in  a  back  room  to  which  casual 
spectators  were  not  admitted.  To  judge  from  the  shrieks  that  arose 
from  it,  the  punishment  was  genuine,  but  they  were  probably  designed 
to  reach  the  magistrate's  ear,  for  when  I  put  an  inquiry  to  the  big 
black  chastiser  some  time  later,  he  replied  with  a  grin,  "  Oh,  not  too 
hard ;  perhaps  a  tingle  or  two  at  the  end  jes'  to  make  him  remember." 
Even  adults  are  not  always  spared  bodily  reminders.  A  vicious  look- 
ing negro  with  a  hint  of  Chinese  ancestry  who  was  convicted  for  the 
fourth  time  of  thieving  was  sentenced  to  one  year  at  hard  labor  and  six 
lashes  with  the  "  cat."  But  as  this  punishment  was  inflicted  at  the 
general  prison,  there  was  no  means  of  learning  how  thoroughly  the 
implement  was  wielded. 

Though  a  Chinese  and  a  Hindu  interpreter  were  present,  all  the  wit- 
nesses, happening  to  be  youthful  and  evidently  born  in  the  colony,  spoke 
perfect  English  —  as  it  is  spoken  in  Trinidad.  It  was  somehow  incon- 
gruous to  hear  a  Hindu  woman  in  her  silken  shroud  and  a  small  cart- 
load of  jewelry  burst  forth,  as  soon  as  she  had  kissed  the  unsavory 
Bible  with  apparent  fervor,  in  the  negro-British  dialect  and  contradict 
the  assertions  of  the  accused  with  some  such  rejoinder  as  "  Whatyer 
tahlk,  mahn,  whatcher  tahlk  ?  "  Those  surprises  are  constantly  being 
sprung  on  the  visitor  to  Trinidad,  however,  for  notwithstanding  the 
composite  of  races  and  the  fact  that  English  was  not  introduced  into 
the  island  until  1815,  it  is  decidedly  the  prevailing  language.  It  is  a 
common  experience  to  hear  a  group  that  is  chattering  in  Hindustanee 
suddenly  change  to  British  slang,  or  to  turn  and  find  that  the  discussion 
of  the  latest  cricket  match  in  the  broad-vowelled  jargon  of  the  British 
West  Indian  negro  is  between  a  Chinese  and  a  Hindu  youth,  both 
dressed  in  the  latest  European  fashion.  Natives  of  the  islands  assert 
that  "  the  English  of  a  typical  Trinidadian  is  probably  as  strongly  in 
contrast  to  that  of  a  typical  Barbadian  as  the  language  of  any  two  parts 


TRINIDAD,  THE  LAND  OF  ASPHALT  389 

of  the  British  Empire."  But  to  the  casual  visitor  they  sound  much 
alike,  and  far  removed  from  our  own  tongue.  We  might  readily  under- 
stand the  expression  "  I  well  glad  de  young  mahn  acquit,"  but  few  of  us 
would  recognize  that  "  Don't  let  he  break  me,  sir,"  means  "  Do  not 
give  him  a  job  after  refusing'  it  to  me."  An  incensed  motorman  cried 
out  to  a  Chinese-Hindu  negro  hackman  who  was  impeding  his  progress, 
"  Why  y'u  don'  go  home  wid  dis  cyart  ef  y'u  can'  drive  et?  "  to  which 
came  the  placid  reply,  "  Why  you  vex,  mahn  ?  Every  victoria  follow  he 
own  wheels."  As  in  the  French  islands,  a  banana  is  called  a  "  fig  "  in 
Trinidad,  while  walls  are  everywhere  decorated  with  the  warning 
"  Stick  no  Bills." 

Speaking  of  bills  of  another  sort,  those  of  the  smaller  denominations 
are  badly  needed  in  the  British  islands.  With  the  exception  of  Jamaica, 
they  reckon  their  money  in  dollars  and  cents,  but  they  are  West  Indian 
dollars,  worth  four  shillings  and  two  pence  each  and  following  the 
English  pound  in  its  rise  or  fall.  Notes  of  five  dollars  are  issued  by  the 
Colonial  Bank  and  the  Royal  Bank  of  Canada,  but  with  the  exception 
of  Trinidad  and  its  dependency,  Tobago,  the  government  of  which 
issues  one-  and  two-dollar  bills,  there  is  no  local  small  change,  and  the 
already  overburdened  visitor  to  these  tropical  climes  must  load  himself 
down  with  a  double  handful  of  English  silver  .and  mammoth  coppers 
each  time  he  breaks  a  five-dollar  bill.  To  add  to  his  struggles  with  the 
clumsy  British  monetary  system,  prices  are  given  in  cents,  when  there 
are  no  cents.  Small  articles  in  the  shops  are  tagged  24c,  48c,  72C, 
and  so  on,  never  25c,  5oc,  or  75c,  which  is  easy  enough,  for  those  are 
the  local  terms  for  one,  two,  or  three  shillings.  But  it  is  not  so  simple 
for  the  heated  and  hurried  stranger  to  calculate  that  the  euphonism 
"  thirty-nine  cents  "  means  a  shilling,  a  sixpence,  a  penny,  and  a  "  ha'- 
penny," and  to  find  the  real  significance  of  a  demand  for  $5.35  requires 
either  a  pencil  and  paper  or  long  practice  in  mental  arithmetic.  Perhaps 
the  least  fatiguing  method  is  to  spread  on  the  counter  the  whole  contents 
of  one  bulging  pocket  and  trust  to  the  clerk's  honesty  —  except  that  he, 
too,  even  if  he  is  trustworthy,  is  apt  to  -be  weak  in  mental  arithmetic. 
The  fall  in  the  value  of  the  pound  sterling  following  the  war  forced 
the  Trinidad  government  to  enact  a  new  ordinance  forbidding  "  the 
melting  down  of  silver  coins  current  in  the  colony,  the  keeping  posses- 
sion of  more  silver  than  is  needed  for  current  expenses,  or  the  buying 
or  offering  to  buy  silver  coins  at  more  than  their  face  value."  The 
drop  in  exchange  had  given  the  metal  more  worth  than  the  coins  them- 


ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

selves,  and  the  Hindu  custom  of  turning  the  family  wealth  into  brace- 
lets and  anklets  for  the  women  was  threatening  to  make  small  financial 
transactions  impossible. 

Marital  felicity  is  by  no  means  universal  in  Trinidad,  if  one  may 
jw%e  from  the  columns  of  warnings  to  the  public  in  its  newspapers. 
In  a  single  issne  may  be  found  a  score  of  insertions  testifying  to  this 
impression  and  to  the  mixture  of  races  : 

The  Public  is  hereby  notified  that  I  wiE  not  be  responsible  for  any  debt  or 
debts  coBtxacted  by  my  wife,  Daisy  Benjamin,  she  having  left  my  house  and 


IZAEIAH  BEXJAMINT, 
Petit  Valley,  Diego  Martin. 

The  PnbSc  is  hereby  notified  that  I  will  not  hold  myself  responsible  for  any 
::::.-  ••_-•-  i~:*-i  :  ;•  -y  w.ft  I.^ri.r.  -hi  Vzr.g  -•;  iongtr  -T.it  7  rry  :r:-:ec::or. 
and  care. 

His 
RAMDOW  X 

Mark 

Bejucal,  CaronL 

Witness  to  Marie:    SANTIAGO  WILSON. 

The  Pdhfic  h  hereby  notified  that  I  win  no  longer  be  responsible  for  the  debts 
of  mf  wife,  Yew  Chin,  she  having  left  my  bouse  and  protection  without  any 
;-*•  n.^t 

LEE  Wo  SING, 
Rock  River  Road,  PenaL 

Occasionally  the  other  side  of  the  house  is  heard  from: 

The  Pdhfic  are  hereby  warned  that  the  undersigned  will  not  be  responsible  for 
any  debts  coati  acted  by  my  husband,  Emmanuel  Paul,  as  we  are  no  longer  as- 
sociated as  hnband  and  wife. 

MARGARET  PAUL, 

Lance  Noir,  Toco. 

The  Spanish  influence  may  he  seen  in  the  custom  of  doctors  and 
drntitiK  advertising  *  Lady  in  Attendance,"  to  add  reassurance  to  their 


The  Government  of  Trinidad  runs  an  excellent  railway  and  coast 
steamer  service.  The  cars  are  of  three  classes,  with  cross-seats,  as  in 
Europe,  though  -with  a  few  compartment  partitions.  Shades  resem- 
bling cap-visors  project  over  the  windows,  and  the  trains  are  as  clean 
and  orderly  as  those  of  Porto  Rico.  First  class  is  small  and  exclusive, 
occupying  only  one  third  of  a  coach,  and  the  rare  traveler  in  it  is  apt 


TRINIDAD,  THE  LAXD  OF  ASPHALT  391 


to  be  taken  for  30  ****p^**^***t  government  ofticial  ^*MT  saluted  bir  aB 
railway  employees  and  stared  at  with  envy  and  a^nmtlimf  irf  by  die 
**  garden  •  variety  of  voyagers.  Even  the  few  while  oliigus  usually 
travel  second-class,  though  tins  is  by  no  aifimf  free  from  African  and 
Asiatic  mixtures.  The  bulk  of  the  train  is  made  op  of  third-class 
coaches,  their  hard  wooden  benches  crowded  with  every  possible  com- 
bination of  iiegio,  itunfM^  O"*<  *•'  j  Venezuelan,  Portuguese,  and  Fieuth 
blood,  with  an  occasional  poor  white,  and  presents  a  truly  cosmopolitan 
couglonifi«iijop  of  garb  and  tongue.  Employees  are  as  mird  in  origin. 
A  big-bearded  *  collector,"  or  station-agent,  with  Hindu  feMaio  which 
seem  strangely  out  of  place  under  his  placarded  cap,  lebukes  a  Cbmese- 
TftfEJff  p*f*f*^gi'i  in  the  amusing  —  Kngilsii  **  of  the  West  Indies,  then 
slaps  a  jet  black  "  head  guard  **  on  the  back  with  a  ~  How  goes?  ~  and 
gets  Ac  reply,  "Oh,  getting  on  poc'  a  pocV  In  addition  to  these 
tigfliat  ticket-seekers,  there  are  inspectors  whose  oflkial  caps  read 
""  rJWfli  Ejcammer,*"  a  tide  which  more  than  one  stranger  has  mnscon- 
strned. 

Trains  are  frequent.  They  are  drawn  by  large  oil-burning  Montreal 
engines  with  white  "drivers"*  and  set  forth  from  Port  of  Spam,  Eke 
our  own  fliers,  over  a  roadbed  in  eiorrllrnt  condition  for  the  first 
twenty  nmes  or  umtCL  Beyond  that,  as  die  fine  breaks  op  into  its 
several  branches,  the  niginrs  get  smaller  and  smaller;  the  fHgiurris 
become  mnbttoes,  then  blacks,  with  only  a  tropical  sense  of  the  vatae  of 
time;  the  tracks  are  more  and  more  congested  with  train-loads  of  cane 
in  the  cutting  season,  with  the  result  that  a  well-arranged  time-table 
is  often  disrupted.  Swampy  stretches  of  mangroves  to  the  light  and 
left  flank  the  first  few  miles.  Groups  of  prisoners,  in  yeflow,  while,  or 
orange  -colored  caps,  .according  to  whether  they  are 
f  dons,  or  "  long-timers,"  are  turning  some  of  these  into  solid 

r^mamrf  |Jaiiljlinin.  WMI  giprre-df  titr  smampt  tnltrm  trnm  wgifar»J 

by  cane,  as  flat  bnds  spread  faiilhct  and  fatthrf  away  OH  the  lent 
to  the  base  of  high  bills  or  low  mountains  uther  arid  in  appearance, 
dfy**  die  denuty  of  thear  LmucJu  and  forest,  red  trans  here  and  there 
cmnbing  their  wooded  flanks. 

Ten  minutes  out  the  oonsoderable  town  of  San  Juan  •nposes  the  first 
halt,  its  platform  seething  with  a  mnln-coioicd  ihiong  strnggnng  wrfL 
eweiy  f"^Mnf  •  of  qutei  luggage.  A  few  mites  farther  on,  aft  the  base 
of  El  Tococbe,  the  highest  peak  of  Trinidad^  is  the  old  Sparn^h  capital 
of  die  island,  San  Jose  de  Oruna,  now  called  St.  Joseph.  Onfike  die 
British,  die  conojuistaAorcs  preferred  to  build  then*  principal 


392          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

some  miles  back  from  the  sea.  It  did  them  little  good  in  this  case, 
however,  for  St.  Joseph  was  burned  to  the  ground  by  that  prince  of 
buccaneers,  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  and  here  the  Spanish  governor,  Chacon, 
surrendered  the  island  to  a  superior  British  force  in  1797  without  a 
fight,  which  may  be  one  of  the  reasons  why  a  street  of  the  old  capital 
is  named  for  him.  St.  Joseph  lies  a  bit  up  hill  from  the  station,  with  a 
magnificent  view  of  the  vast  Caroni  plain,  a  floor-flat  vega  dense 
with  vegetation,  dotted  with  villages,  and  here  and  there  the  stacks  of 
sugar-mills,  called  usin£s  in  Trinidad.  Scattered,  somewhat  hilly,  with 
the  languid,  capacious  air  of  a  village,  the  old  capital  is  interesting  to- 
day for  its  flora  and  its  historical  reminiscences.  Veritable  grand- 
fathers of  trees,  with  long  beards,  their  immense  branches  thickly 
grown  with  orchids  and  other  flowering  parasites,  shade  it  at  every 
hour  of  the  day.  Humming-birds  flit  in  and  out  among  its  masses  of 
red  and  purple  bougainvillea.  The  trade  wind,  which  seldom  reaches 
Port  of  Spain,  sweeps  down  through  a  break  in  the  brownish-green 
hills  which  hem  the  former  capital  in;  if  it  is  uncomfortably  hot  at 
noonday,  it  is  because  all  Trinidad  is  aware  of  its  proximity  to  the 
equator.  Of  Spanish  ruins  it  has  none,  but  there  are  numerous  Vene- 
zuelan inhabitants,  and  the  Castilian  tongue  and  customs  have  to  some 
extent  survived.  Here,  too,  are  strange  interminglings  of  races  and 
tongues  —  "  El  Toro  Store  "  on  Piccadilly  Street ;  a  rum-shop  called 
"  The  Trinidadians'  Delight "  on  Buena  Vista  Street.  In  its  dry  and 
stony  cemetery  are  monuments  with  Chinese,  Spanish,  Hindu,  French 
and  English  names,  some  of  the  last  all  too  evidently  those  of  negroes. 

The  newspapers  of  Trinidad  announced  a  "  Big  Field  Day  and  Race 
meeting "  at  Tunapuna,  a  few  miles  beyond  St.  Joseph,  on  Easter 
Monday.  Having  lived  through  five  British  holidays  in  the  brief  ten 
days  since  our  landing  in  Barbados,  we  ventured  to  hope  that  here 
might  be  something  less  deadly  dull.  Had  we  paused  to  reflect,  we 
should  have  known  that  white  people  did  not  attend  these  popular 
festivities.  The  horror  on  the  face  of  an  English  native  to  whom  we 
mentioned  our  destination  might  have  given  us  the  same  information, 
had  we  not  taken  it  to  be  an  expression  of  pain  at  being  addressed 
without  a  formal  introduction. 

Tunapuna  is  as  Hindu  as  St.  Joseph  is  Spanish.  The  domes,  or, 
mtire  exactly,  spheres  of  a  white  Brahmin  temple  bulk  high  above  its  low 
houses.  These  are  little  mud-plastered  houses,  for  the  most  part,  with 
dents  poked  in  their  walls  before  they  have  dried,  by  way  of  decoration, 
which  seem  to  be  direct  importations  from  India.  The  broad  asphalt 


TRINIDAD,  THE  LAND  OF  ASPHALT  393 

highway  bisecting  the  town  was  as  seething  a  stream  of  humanity  as 
the  Great  Trunk  Road.  Hindus  in  their  anklets  and  toe-rings,  their 
clanking  bracelets  and  light-colored  flowing  garments,  made  up  the 
bulk  of  the  throng,  with  here  and  there  a  Venezuelan  driving  a  pack- 
laden  donkey  to  give  contrast  to  the  picture.  If  the  place  had  a  Eu- 
ropean section,  it  eluded  our  attention ;  it  looked  like  a  village  of  India 
in  which  a  few  African  settlers  had  taken  up  their  residence. 

The  "  field  day  "  was  held  on  a  broad  level  space  in  the  center  of 
town.  Constant  streams  of  vari-colored  Trinidadians,  all  clad  in  their 
most  gasp-provoking  holiday  attire,  poured  into  it  from  special  trains 
that  arrived  in  close  succession.  A  bandstand  covered  with  palm- 
leaves  had  been  erected  for  the  higher  social  orders,  but  even  this  was 
no  place  for  a  white  spectator  who  did  not  care  to  arouse  conspicuous 
attention.  There  were  perhaps  half  a  dozen  white  men,  all  British 
soldiers,  scattered  through  the  hilarious  throng,  but  not  a  woman  of  her 
own  race  to  keep  Rachel  in  countenance.  Of  near- whites  there  was 
no  scarcity,  all  of  them  affecting  the  haughty  English  manner  in  the 
vain  hope  of  concealing  the  African  in  their  family  wood-pile.  Some 
of  the  mixtures  of  race,  language,  and  custom  were  incredible.  Next 
to  us  sat  a  woman  who  appeared  to  be  half  Hindu  and  half  English, 
who  spoke  Spanish,  and  who  carried  a  quadroon  baby  with  straw- 
colored  hair  and  almond-shaped  blue  eyes.  We  awarded  her  the  palm 
for  human  conglomeration,  but  there  were  many  more  who  could  have 
run  her  a  close  race. 

The  contests  consisted  mainly  of  bicycle  races,  an  uproarious  hubbub 
invariably  breaking  out  among  the  motley  judges  and  officials  after  each 
of  them,  causing  great  delay  before  the  shotgun  which  served  as  starting 
pistol  set  the  stage  for  a  new  controversy.  In  view  of  the  fact  that 
the  contestants  were  vari-colored  youths  who  probably  lived  in  un- 
painted  shanties  and  wore  shoes  only  on  Sundays,  the  tableful  of  prizes 
beside  us  was  amusing.  Among  them  we  noted  a  gold-plated  jewel-box, 
a  cut-glass  fruit-dish,  an  ice-cream  freezer,  a  gold-scrolled  liqueur  set, 
a  hatstand  of  gilt-tipped  ox-horns,  two  manicure  sets,  a  pair  of  marble 
horses,  and  several  overdecorated  small  clocks.  One  of  the  many 
dandies  who  were  continually  displaying  their  graces  to  the  feminine 
portion  of  the  stand,  under  the  pretense  of  finding  the  open  space  before 
it  more  comfortable  than  the  chairs,  protested  that  the  prizes  "  lacked 
show."  Up  to  that  moment  that  had  seemed  to  us  the  one  thing  they 
did  not  lack.  This  particular  individual,  a  mulatto  with  a  touch  of 
Chinese,  wore  a  tweed  coat  and  white  flannel  trousers,  an  artificial 


394          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

daisy  in  his  buttonhole,  a  brown  necktie  embroidered  at  the  top  with 
flowers  and  at  the  bottom  with  the  word  "  Peace  "  in  large  letters,  and 
carried  a  riding-crop.  Those  of  his  companions  who  were  not  armed 
with  this  latter  sign  of  field-officer  rank  all  bore  canes.  One  of  them 
flaunted  a  cravat  decorated  with  the  flags  of  all  the  Allies.  The  ma- 
jority frequently  removed  their  hats,  regardless  of  the  blazing  sunshine, 
quite  evidently  for  the  purpose  of  showing  that  their  hair  was  not 
curly,  an  improvement  for  which  several  quite  evidently  had  to  thank 
"  Mme.  Walker's  Peerless  Remedies."  An  inattentive  spectator  might 
have  concluded  from  the  wagers  shouted  back  and  forth  among  them 
at  the  beginning  of  each  race  that  they  were  persons  of  unlimited 
wealth,  but  it  was  noticeable  that  very  little  money  actually  changed 
hands.  Here,  too,  the  lines  of  demarkation  were  social,  rather  than 
racial.  A  Hindu  youth  dressed  in  the  latest  imitation  of  London 
fashion  might  call  across  the  compound  to  his  equally  ornate  Chinese 
friend,  "  Heh,  Lee !  Come  down,  mahn !  "  but  he  gave  no  sign  of  seeing 
the  East  Indian  in  khaki  and  a  battered  felt  hat  who  sold  peanuts  in 
tiny  measures  cleverly  arranged  so  that  most  of  the  nuts  stuck  to  the 
bottom  when  they  were  upturned  in  the  purchaser's  hand. 

Beyond  Tunapuna  next  day  other  Hindus  in  the  loose  garb  of  their 
homeland  were  clawing  about  the  rice  blades  in  their  little  paddy-fields, 
cut  up  into  small  squares  by  low  dikes.  Wattled  huts,  with  East 
Indians  squatted  on  their  heels  in  the  bare,  hard-trodden  spaces  before 
them,  intermingled  with  wooden  shanties,  sometimes  with  lace  cur- 
tains at  the  glassless  windows,  shanties  fairly  bursting  with  their  swarm- 
ing negro  families.  Tall,  slender  flagpoles  from  which  flew  little  red 
flags,  some  of  them  already  bleached  white,  showed  where  goats  had 
been  sacrificed  in  the  frequent  ceremonies  of  the  Brahmin  inhabitants. 
Little  white  Hindu  temples  alternated  with  small  negro  churches. 
Through  Tacarigua,  with  its  clusters  of  buildings  flung  far  up  the  red- 
scarred  hillsides,  Arouca,  Dabadie,  the  procession  of  huts  and  cabins 
continued.  Almost  without  exception  they  were  unpainted  and  un- 
adorned with  anything  but  the  barest  necessities,  for  Trinidad,  too, 
labors  under  the  discouraging  "  improvement  tax." 

Arima,  the  last  settlement  of  the  aborigines  before  they  disappeared 
from  the  island  as  a  race,  spreads  over  a  slightly  elevated  plateau,  its 
wide  streets  and  well  separated  houses  giving  an  impression  of  unlimited 
elbow-room,  its  huge  trees  and  flowery  shrubbery  making  up  for  its 
dry-goods-box  style  of  architecture.  Here  is  Trinidad's  chief  race- 


TRINIDAD,  THE  LAND  OF  ASPHALT  395 

track,  enclosing  a  grassy  playground  that  almost  rivals  Port  of  Spain's 
savanna,  but  the  incessant  staring  of  the  inhabitants  suggests  that 
white  men  are  ordinarily  rare  sights  in  this  important  cacao  center,  as 
they  are  in  many  sections  of  the  island. 

Beyond  Arima  the  hills  die  out  and  for  miles  the  track  is  walled  by 
uncultivated  brush  or  virgin  forests,  with  only  a  rare  frontier-like  vil- 
lage and  a  few  young  cacao  plantations  sheltered  from  the  sun  by  the 
bois  immortel,  or  what  Spaniards  call  madre  del  cacao.  Hindus  are 
more  numerous  in  this  region  than  negroes.  The  railway  ends  at  the 
thriving  town  of  Sangre  Grande,  though  it  hopes  soon  to  push  on  to 
the  east  coast.  Chinese  merchants  and  the  resultant  half-breeds  are 
unusually  numerous;  Hindu  women  in  full  metallic  regalia,  sitting  in 
buggies  like  farmers'  wives  in  our  western  prairie  towns,  some  of  them 
smoking  little  Irish-looking  clay  pipes,  and  silversmiths  of  the  same 
race,  naked  but  for  a  clout,  plying  their  trade  in  back  alleys,  are  among 
the  sights  of  the  place. 

The  Ford  mail-and-passenger  bus  in  which  I  continued  my  journey 
was  driven  by  a  youth,  whose  grandparents  were  respectively  Chinese, 
Hindu,  negro,  and  white.  The  first  had  given  him  an  emotionless 
countenance  and  a  strict  attention  to  business,  the  second  a  slender, 
almost  girlish  form  and  a  silky  complexion,  the  third  wavy  hair  and  an 
explosive  laughter,  and  the  last  frequent  attacks  of  that  haughty  surli- 
ness so  common  to  mulattoes  or  quadroons.  Among  the  passengers 
was  a  Hindu  girl  of  striking  beauty.  She  spoke  excellent  English  with 
a  strong  West  Indian  accent,  was  tastefully  and  specklessly  dressed  in 
a  Caucasian  waist,  black  silk  skirt,  and  kid  shoes,  wore  her  silky  black 
hair  done  up  in  European  fashion,  and  had  the  manners  of  an  English 
debutante  of  the  sheltered  class.  Yet  in  her  nose  she  wore  two  gold 
rings,  her  arms  gleamed  with  silver  bracelets  from  wrists  to  elbows, 
about  her  neck  was  a  string  of  heavy  gold  coins,  and  a  flowered  silk 
wrap  was  flung  about  her  shoulders  and  head.  Beside  her  sat  a  youth 
of  the  same  race,  completely  Europeanized  in  garb  and  manner.  In 
front,  separated  from  this  pair  by  one  of  the  slow-witted,  scornful 
negroes  who  filled  most  of  the  two  seats,  was  an  East  Indian  in  full 
white  Hindu  regalia,  —  a  simple,  faintly  purple  turban,  white  caste 
marks  across  his  forehead  and  in  front  of  his  ears,  and  a  string  of 
black,  seed-like  beads  about  his  neck.  Not  once  during  the  journey  did 
he  give  a  sign  of  recognition  to  his  Anglicized  compatriots. 

We  snorted  away  along  an  asphalt  highway  bordered  by  large  cacao 
estates,  passing  many  automobiles,  some  of  them  driven  by  Chinese  and 


396          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

Hindus,  even  through  a  great  forest,with  many  immense  trees,  their 
branches  laden  with  orchids  and  climbing  vines.  Except  for  one  low 
ridge  the  country  was  flat,  with  not  even  a  suggestion  of  the  rugged 
scenery  of  most  West  Indian  islands.  Long  hedges  of  hibiscus  in  full 
red  bloom  lined  the  way  through  the  considerable  town  of  Matura, 
where  negroes  far  outranked  the  Hindus  in  numbers  and  Chinamen 
kept  virtually  all  the  shops.  Soon  the  landscape  turned  to  cocoanut 
plantations,  the  now  narrow  road  mounted  somewhat,  and  the  Atlantic 
spread  out  before  us.  But  it  was  shallow  and  yellowish,  not  at  all 
like  the  sea-lashed  east  coasts  of  Barbados  or  Dominica,  the  shores  of 
its  many  bays  and  indentations  low  and  heavily  wooded,  a  hazy  clump 
of  hills  stretching  far  away  into  the  south.  Then  came  a  cluster  of 
ridges  and  mounds  of  earth  covered  with  primeval  forest,  only  little 
patches  of  which  had  been  cleared  to  give  place  to  the  most  primitive, 
weather-beaten  thatched  huts.  These  were  scattered  at  long  intervals 
along  the  way  and  all  inhabited  by  negroes,  the  other  races  evidently 
finding  the  region  too  undeveloped  for  their  more  civilized  taste.  Nine- 
teen miles  from  Sangre  Grande  the  bus  halted  at  a  cluster  of  hovels 
on  Balandra  Bay,  the  road,  which  pushes  on  to  the  northeast  point  of 
the  island,  being  impassable  for  vehicles. 

From  that  point  one  may  see  the  important  island  of  Tobago,  the 
chief  of  Trinidad's  dependencies  and  the  most  recent  of  England's 
possessions  in  the  West  Indies.  It  is  reputed  to  have  been  the  most 
fiercely  contested  bit  of  ground  in  the  western  hemisphere,  having 
been  constantly  disputed  by  the  French,  Spanish,  and  English,  until  it 
finally  fell  to  the  latter  in  1803.  To  this  day  it  is  surrounded  by  the 
ruins  of  old  forts.  French  names  still  survive  in  its  capital,  Scar- 
borough, and  the  splendid  system  of  roads  it  once  boasted  have  been 
allowed  to  go  back  to  bush  under  British  rule.  In  1889  it  was  annexed 
to  Trinidad,  though  it  retains  its  own  elective  financial  board.  Like 
many  of  the  British  West  Indies,  Tobago  has  seen  the  insolence  and 
aggressiveness  of  its  negroes  greatly  increased  by  the  example  of  those 
who  were  debauched  in  France,  and  was  forced  to  suppress  one  riot 
with  considerable  bloodshed.  The  island  may  be  reached  weekly  by 
government  steamer  from  Port  of  Spain. 

At  St.  Joseph  the  more  important  branch  of  the  railway  turns  south 
and,  sending  an  offshoot  through  a  fertile  cacao  district  and  the  oil 
regions  about  Tabaquite  to  Rio  Claro,  follows  the  coast  of  the  Gulf 


TRINIDAD,  THE  LAND  OF  ASPHALT  397 

of  Paria  to  the  edge  of  the  southern  chain  of  hills.  A  so-called  express 
train  connects  the  capital  with  the  metropolis  of  the  south  once  a  week, 
but  on  account  of  the  English  "  staff  system  "  in  vogue,  its  speed  is 
frequently  checked  and  sophisticated  passengers  get  on  or  off  as  it 
slows  up  at  each  station  to  exchange  the  iron  hoop  which  is  the  en- 
gineer's passport  for  the  ensuing  section.  Broad,  flat  vegas  spread  on 
either  hand  beyond  the  old  Spanish  capital,  the  northern  range  of  hills 
withdrawing  to  the  edge  of  the  horizon.  Great  pastures  with  huge 
spreading  trees,  some  of  them  gay  with  blossoms,  and  thick  clumps  of 
bamboo  alternate  with  extensive  cane-fields,  most  of  them  covered  with 
the  young  shoots  after  the  recent  cutting  in  this  April  season.  Here 
and  there  stands  a  large  usine,  or  sugar-mill,  with  long  rows  of  coolie 
dwellings,  some  housing  a  dozen  families  side  by  side,  while  outside  the 
estate  are  crowded  together  the  tin-roofed  shacks  of  the  negro  and 
Hindu  workmen  who  prefer  to  house  themselves,  rather  than  submit 
to  the  exacting  sanitary  rules  of  the  company.  The  fields  that  are  still 
uncut  have  those  fat  yellow  canes  with  long  joints  that  are  the  joy 
of  the  sugar  grower,  for  the  Caroni  plain  is  famed  for  its  fertility. 
Humped  Indian  bulls  and  their  tropic-defying  offspring  dot  the  pastures 
and  corrals.  From  Canupia  a  road  leads  to  Alligator  Village,  where 
Hindus  may  be  seen  standing  naked  and  motionless  on  their  flimsy 
little  rafts  made  of  woven  palm-fronds  catching  cascadura,  the  choicest 
delicacy  of  Trinidad.  The  natives  have  a  saying  that  whoever  tastes 
the  flesh  of  this  cross  between  a  turtle  and  a  lizard  must  return  to  end 
his  days  in  the  island. 

Cacao  plantations,  shaded  by  forests  of  high  trees,  gradually  replace 
the  cane-fields  as  the  train  speeds  southward.  Parasites  and  climbing 
lianas,  that  death-dealing  vine  called  matapalo  by  the  Spaniards  and 
"  Scotch  attorney  "  by  the  Trinidadians,  which  finally  chokes  to  death 
the  tree  that  sustains  it,  usurping  its  heritage  of  nourishment,  give  the 
forest  wall  the  appearance  of  a  great  carelessly  woven  tapestry. 
Wattled  huts  as  primitive  as  those  of  Haiti,  many  of  them  of  spreading 
cone  shape,  thrust  their  thatched  roofs  above  the  vegetation,  giving 
many  a  vista  a  touch  that  carries  the  mind  back  to  India.  Chaguanas, 
Carapichaima,  Couva  —  the  towns  nearly  all  bear  Spanish  names  — 
are  populous,  though  California  has  a  mere  handful  of  hovels.  Near 
the  last  the  low  wooded  foothills  of  the  central  range  begin  to  peer 
above  the  flat  cane  and  cacao  lands  to  the  left;  then  the  train  bursts 
suddenly  out  on  the  edge  of  the  gulf  amid  a  flurry  of  cocoanut  palms. 


398          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

Claxton's  Bay  and  Point-a-Pierre  again  recall  Trinidad's  mixture  of 
tongues,  and  at  length  the  staff-hampered  "  express "  staggers  into 
San  Fernando. 

The  second  city  of  Trinidad  has  but  ten  thousand  inhabitants.  It  is 
strewn  over  a  clump  of  wooded  knolls  at  the  base  of  Naparima  Hill, 
rising  six  hundred  feet  above  it.  Its  population  is  so  overwhelmingly 
East  Indian  that  even  the  English  residents  are  forced  to  learn  Hindu- 
stance.  "  His  Worship,"  the  mayor,  is  a  Hindu ;  on  certain  days  of 
the  week  the  visitor  who  strolls  through  its  wide,  asphalted  streets 
might  easily  fancy  himself  in  a  market  city  of  central  India.  Such 
signs  as  "  Sultan  Khan,  Pawn  Broker,"  "Samaroo,  Barber,"  or  "  Jagai, 
Licensed  to  Deal  in  Cacao  and  Licenseable  Produce  "  are  triply  as 
numerous  as  the  shops  bearing  such  patently  negro  mottoes  as  "  To 
Trust  is  to  Burst." 

A  toy  train  runs  from  San  Fernando  through  rolling  fields  of  cane 
to  Prince's  Town,  which  name  it  adopted  in  honor  of  a  visit  long  years 
ago  by  the  present  king  and  his  brother.  The  "  staffs  "  in  this  case 
are  human.  Every  mile  or  less  the  engineer  halts  to  take  on  board 
from  a  kind  of  sentry-box  a  uniformed  negro  wearing  a  bright  red 
cap  —  which,  no  doubt,  makes  it  possible  to  reduce  his  wages  by  half 
—  stenciled  with  the  number  of  the  section  for  which  he  is  responsible. 
Prince's  Town  lies  in  the  Naparima  plain,  the  second  of  Trinidad's 
great  fertile  vegas;  or  one  may  visit  another  portion  of  it  by  continuing 
to  the  end  of  the  main  line.  On  the  way  are  Debe,  almost  wholly  a 
Hindu  town,  with  a  stream  of  many  castes  pouring  down  its  highway, 
and  Penal,  with  its  miles  of  Hindu  vegetable  gardens  and  its  mud-and- 
reed  huts  that  seem  to  have  been  transported  direct  from  India.  Then 
comes  a  long  run  through  an  almost  uninhabited  wilderness,  though 
with  considerable  cacao  on  its  low,  jungle-like  hills,  and  finally  Siparia, 
a  rapidly  growing  frontier  village  where  busses  and  automobiles  are 
waiting  to  carry  travelers  to  the  slightly  developed  southern  side  of  the 
island. 

As  we  raced  back  down  the  hill  again  my  hitherto  private  first-class 
compartment  —  no,  I  shall  not  divulge  the  secret  of  why  I  chanced  to  be 
displaying  this  sign  of  opulence  and  snobbishness  —  was  invaded  by  the 
first  American  I  had  met  in  Trinidad  outside  the  capital.  He  was  an 
oil-driller  from  one  of  the  newly  developed  fields.  But  though  he  had 
been  drawing  three  times  the  salary  of  a  college  professor,  he  had 
"  threw  up  the  job  because  me  an'  that  there  field-man  did  n't  hitch. 
He  's  only  a  Britisher,  anyway."  What  might  have  been  a  pleasant 


TRINIDAD,  THE  LAND  OF  ASPHALT  399 

conversation  was  disrupted  by  my  new  companion  with  such  remarks  as 
"  Panama  ?  Where  's  that  ?  Up  towards  New  Orleans  ?  "  "  Hindus  ? 
Is  them  Hindus  with  rings  in  their  noses?  I  thought  them  was  East 
Indians."  There  is  a  saying  in  Trinidad,  as  in  many  other  parts  of  the 
world,  that  only  fools  or  Americans  ride  first-class.  This  man  was 
both,  for  he  was  "  afraid  to  go  second  for  fear  my  friends  '11  see  me 
an'  think  I  'm  goin'  broke  "  —  an  impression  that  would  not  have  been 
at  fault,  as  he  had  "  blowed  "  his  princely  wages  as  fast  as  he  earned 
them. 

The  favorite  excursion  from  Port  of  Spain  is  that  by  government 
steamer  through  the  Bocas  Islands,  which  are  scattered  along  the  north- 
western horn  of  Trinidad.  First  comes  a  cluster  of  jagged  rocks 
with  a  few  large  trees,  called  Five  Islands,  government-owned  and 
occupied  by  from  one  to  three  houses  each,  which  may  be  rented  by 
the  week  when  they  are  not  in  use  as  quarantine  stations.  On  one  of 
them  is  the  principal  prison  of  the  colony,  and  convicts  in  charge  of  a 
guard  row  out  for  the  supplies  and  mail  from  town.  Indeed,  the 
journey  is  a  constant  succession  of  rowboat  parties,  not  to  say  mishaps, 
for  it  is  frequently  blowing  a  gale  about  the  Bocas,  and  as  the  steamer 
nowhere  ventures  close  to  shore,  passengers  and  groceries  are  often 
subjected  to  thorough  duckings,  if  nothing  worse.  The  larger  islands 
are  privately  owned,  and  dotted  with  pretentious  "  summer "  homes 
of  those  who  cannot  spend  the  hottest  months  in  Grenada  or  Barbados. 
An  entire  bay  of  one  of  them  belongs  to  the  son  of  the  inventor  of  one 
of  Trinidad's  most  famous  products,  "  Angostura  Bitters."  I  am  not 
in  a  position  to  divulge  the  secret  of  its  manufacture,  beyond  stating 
that  it  contains  rum,  mace,  nutmeg,  and  powdered  orange  skins,  which 
latter  detail  accounts  for  the  fact  that  the  market-women  of  Port  of 
Spain  pare  their  oranges  as  we  do  an  apple  and  that  the  stone  fences 
of  the  town  are  always  littered  with  orange-peelings  drying  in  the 
sun. 

Monos  Island  lies  beyond  the  mainland,  and  between  that  and  the 
last  and  largest,  rejoicing  in  the  name  of  Chacachacare,  are  several 
bocas,  or  channels,  through  which  pass  steamers  touching  at  Trinidad. 
The  colony  was  in  an  uproar  at  the  time  of  our  visit  because  the 
government  had  proposed  to  turn  Chaca  —  but  why  repeat  it  all?  — 
over  to  the  lepers.  Thanks  largely  to  its  Hindu  population,  Trinidad 
has  more  than  its  share  of  these  sufferers,  and  though  they  are  "  iso- 
lated "  in  an  asylum  on  the  mainland  or  in  their  owe  homes,  they  are 


400          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

frequently  found  mingling  with  holiday  throngs.  Trinidadians  pro- 
tested against  advertising  the  prevalence  of  leprosy  by  housing  the  in- 
valids on  the  most  conspicuous  part  of  the  colony,  and  the  charge  of 
graft  was  as  freely  bantered  back  and  forth  as  in  our  own  merry  land 
under  similar  conditions.  From  Chacachacare  one  may  see  a  great 
stretch  of  Venezuela  across  the  straits,  the  spur  of  the  Andes  on  which 
sits  Caracas  rising  higher  and  higher  into  the  sky  and  disappearing  at 
length  in  the  direction  of  lofty  Bogota. 

But  to  most  strangers  Trinidad  has  little  meaning  except  as  the  home 
of  the  "  asphalt  lake."  Strictly  speaking,  it  is  neither  the  one  nor  the 
other,  being  rather  a  pitch  deposit,  but  it  would  be  foolish  to  quibble 
over  mere  words.  It  is  sufficient  to  know  that  the  spot  furnishes  most 
of  the  asphalt  for  the  western  hemisphere. 

To  reach  it  one  must  return  to  San  Fernando  by  train  and  continue 
by  government  steamer.  This  frequently  flees  before  the  ebbing  tide 
and  anchors  far  out  in  the  shallow,  yellowish  gulf  until  its  passengers 
have  been  rowed  aboard,  then  turns  southwest  along  a  flat,  uninteresting 
coast.  The  pea-soup-colored  sea  swarms  with  jelly-fish  that  resemble 
huge  acorns  in  shape  and  color  and  on  which  whales  come  to  feed  at 
certain  seasons.  Among  them  floats  another  species  with  long  tendrils, 
a  mere  touch  of  which  leaves  a  sharply  stinging  sensation  for  hours 
afterward.  The  steamer  touches  at  half  a  dozen  villages  down  the 
long  southern  prong  of  Trinidad,  rounding  the  point  twice  a  week  to 
Icacos,  reputed  the  largest  cocoanut  plantation  in  the  world.  It  is 
owned  by  an  old  Corsican  who  "  came  out "  in  his  youth  as  a  porter, 
and  who,  in  the  words  of  the  captain,  "  is  of  no  class  at  all,"  yet  he  has 
a  mansion  in  Port  of  Spain,  several  daughters  married  to  French 
counts,  and  so  much  money  "  he  does  n't  know  arithmetic  enough  to 
count  it." 

But  our  interests  are  in  the  first  port  of  call  out  of  San  Fernando. 
A  bit  beyond  the  reddish  town  of  La  Brea  (the  Spanish  word  for 
pitch)  a  very  long  pier  with  an  ocean  steamer  at  the  far  end  of  it  and 
iron  buckets  flying  back  and  forth  between  it  and  the  land,  like  a  pro- 
cession of  sea-gulls  feeding  their  young,  juts  out  into  the  gulf.  Not 
so  many  years  ago  all  the  population  of  this  spot,  called  Brighton,  lived 
on  the  pier,  the  shore  being  famous  for  a  fever  that  brought  almost 
certain  death  within  two  days.  This  completely  disappeared,  however, 
when  American  concessionists  turned  the  jungle  into  pasture  land.  The 
air  is  full  of  pelicans,  clumsily  diving  for  fish  or  awaiting  their  turn  for 
a  seat  on  the  protruding  jib  boom  of  a  wrecked  schooner,  along  which 


TRINIDAD,  THE  LAND  OF  ASPHALT  401 

others  sat  as  tightly  crowded  together  as  subway  passengers  in  the 
evening  rush-hour. 

We  landed  with  misgiving,  having  often  heard  of  "  that  terrible  walk  " 
from  the  pier  to  the  "  lake."  No  doubt  it  seems  so  to  many  a  tourist, 
being  nearly  ten  minutes  long  up  a  very  gentle  slope  by  a  perfect 
macadam  highway.  Beside  it  buckets  are  constantly  roaring  past  on 
elevated  cables,  carrying  pitch  to  the  ship  or  returning  for  a  new  load 
with  an  almost  human  air  of  preoccupation.  The  highway  leads  to 
the  gate  of  a  yard  with  a  mine-like  reduction  plant  peopled  with  tar- 
smeared  negroes,  immediately  behind  which  opens  out  the  "  lake." 

The  far-famed  deposit  is  not  much  to  look  at.  It  is  a  slightly  con- 
cave, black  patch  of  a  hundred  acres,  with  as  definite  shores  as  a  lake 
of  water,  surrounded  by  a  Venezuelan  landscape  of  scanty  brush  and 
low,  thirsty  palms.  To  the  left  the  black  towers  of  half  a  dozen  oil- 
wells  break  the  otherwise  featureless  horizon.  About  the  surface  of 
the  hollow  several  groups  of  negroes  work  leisurely.  One  in  each 
group  turns  up  with  every  blow  of  his  pick  a  black,  porous  lump  of 
pitch  averaging  the  size  of  a  market-basket ;  the  others  bear  these  away 
on  their  heads  to  small  cars  on  narrow  tracks,  along  which  they  are 
pushed  by  hand  to  the  "  factory."  That  is  all  there  is  to  it ;  an  easier 
job  for  all  concerned  would  be  hard  to  find.  A  trade  wind  sweeps 
almost  constantly  across  the  field,  the  pitch  is  so  light  that  the  largest 
lump  is  hardly  a  burden,  from  the  nature  of  the  case  the  pace  is  not 
fast,  and  the  workers  are  so  constantly  in  sight  that  an  overseer  is  hardly 
needed,  nor  piece-work  required.  The  men  are  paid  eighty  cents  a 
day  of  ten  hours,  which  seems  much  to  them  and  little  to  their  em- 
ployers, producing  mutual  satisfaction.  The  work  calls  for  no  skill 
whatever ;  it  is  carried  on  in  the  open  air,  with  women  venders  of  food 
and  drink  free  to  come  and  go;  on  the  side  of  the  concessionists  the 
deposit  offers  not  even  the  difficulty  of  transportation,  being  barely  a 
mile  from  the  ship,  furnishing  its  own  material  for  the  necessary 
roads,  and  virtually  inexhaustible.  The  holes  dug  during  the  day  fill 
imperceptibly  and  are  gone  by  morning,  the  deepest  one  ever  excavated 
having  disappeared  in  three  days.  Only  a  small  fraction  of  the  field 
is  exploited ;  it  could  easily  keep  all  the  ships  of  the  world  busy. 
Should  it  ever  be  exhausted,  there  is  a  still  larger  deposit  just  across 
the  bay  in  Venezuela.  In  the  slang  of  financial  circles,  "  it  is  like 
finding  it." 

The  lake  is  soft  underfoot,  like  a  tar  sidewalk  in  midsummer,  the 
heels  sinking  out  of  sight  in  a  minute  or  two,  and  has  a  faint  smell  of 


402          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

sulphur.  In  a  few  places  it  is  not  .solid  enough  to  sustain  a  man's 
weight,  though  children  and  the  barefooted  workmen  scamper  across 
it  anywhere  at  sight  of  a  white  visitor  for  the  inevitable  British  West 
Indian  purpose  of  demanding  "  a  penny,  please,  sir."  A  crease  remains 
around  each  hole  as  it  refills,  some  of  these  rolling  under  like  the  edge 
of  a  rising  mass  of  dough,  and  in  these  crevices,  the  rain  gathers  in 
puddles  of  clear,  though  black-looking,  water  in  which  the  surrounding 
families  do  their  washing.  Only  negroes  are  employed  as  laborers; 
the  twenty-five  white  men  in  the  higher  positions  are  nearly  all  Ameri- 
cans, those  with  families  housed  in  company  bungalows  on  the  slope 
above  the  gulf,  the  bachelors  in  a  company  hotel.  Most  of  the  pitch 
goes  directly  to  the  steamer,  but  as  it  is  one-third  water,  and  royalties, 
duties,  and  transportation  are  paid  by  weight,  a  certain  proportion  is 
boiled  in  vats  in  the  '*  factory  "  and  shipped  in  barrels  constructed  on 
the  spot.  From  the  vat-platforms  spreads  out  a  vast  panorama,  with 
San  Fernando  at  the  base  of  its  lonely  hill,  Port  of  Spain  on  its  gently 
sloping  plain,  the  entire  Gulf  of  Paria,  the  Bocas  Islands,  and  the  moun- 
tains of  eastern  Venezuela  all  in  plain  sight. 

The  pitch  lake  was  known  even  in  the  days  of  Sir  Walter  Raleigh, 
who  "  payed  "  his  vessels  here  during  lulls  in  buccaneering,  but  it  has 
been  exploited  only  during  the  last  few  decades.  Three  hundred  thou- 
sands tons  have  been  shipped  during  a  single  year,  the  revenue  to  the 
Government  of  Trinidad  in  1912  being  £63,453.  Indeed,  one  of  the 
main  reasons  why  the  island  has  a  much  more  prosperous  air  than  its 
neighbors  is  that  millions  have  been  paid  into  its  treasury  in  royalties 
and  duties  from  its  only  "  lake."  When  a  steamer  is  loading,  buckets 
and  negroes  toil  all  through  the  night  in  the  glare  of  electric-lights. 
The  barrels  of  the  refined  product  were  first  stowed  on  their  sides,  but 
as  they  flattened  out  into  a  four  hundred  pound  cube  that  could  neither 
be  rolled  nor  lifted,  they  are  now  stood  on  end,  tier  after  tier.  The 
crude  pitch  becomes  a  solid  mass  during  the  journey  north,  and  must 
be  dug  up  again  with  picks  when  it  reaches  Perth  Amboy. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

AFRICAN    JAMAICA 

IT  may  be  that  our  affection  for  Jamaica  is  tempered  by  the  diffi- 
culties we  had  in  reaching  it.  Lying  well  inside  the  curve  described 
by  the  other  West  Indies,  the  scarcity  of  shipping  caused  by  the 
World  War  has  left  it  almost  unattainable  from  any  of  the  other  islands 
and  hardly  to  be  reached,  except  directly  from  New  York  or  Panama. 
We  first  attempted  to  visit  it  from  Santiago  de  Cuba,  early  in  our 
journey.  But  as  this  would  have  meant  spending  an  interminable 
twenty-four  hours,  and  perhaps  much  more,  on  a  little  coasting-steamer 
not  even  fit  for  the  "  slave  traffic  "  in  which  it  is  chiefly  engaged,  at 
a  fare  equal  to  that  from  St.  Thomas  to  Barbados  in  an  ocean  liner, 
the  depositing  of  an  equal  amount  to  pay  the  expenses  of  a  very  prob- 
able quarantine  of  a  week  because  of  a  few  scattered  cases  of  small- 
pox in  Cuba,  and  the  unwinding  of  a  formidable  mesh  of  red  tape,  we 
decided  to  defer  our  call  and  pick  up  the  island  on  the  way  home. 
That  surely  would  be  easy,  we  concluded,  for  traffic  certainly  should 
be  frequent  between  the  two  largest  of  the  British  West  Indies.  Ar- 
rived in  Trinidad,  however,  we  found  that  island  as  completely  cut  off 
from  Jamaica  as  if  they  belonged  to  two  enemy  powers.  We  at  length 
succeeded  in  coaxing  the  captain  of  a  British  freighter  —  the  most 
pleasant  craft,  by  the  way,  of  all  our  journey  —  touching  at  every  port 
on  the  north  coast  of  South  America  and  spending  three  weeks  on  the 
way,  to  carry  us  to  Panama,  whence  another  steamer  bore  us  back 
again  to  several  Colombian  ports  and  eventually  landed  us  in  Jamaica 
seven  weeks  after  leaving  Trinidad.  Had  we  not  set  our  hearts  on 
making  our  tour  of  the  West  Indies  complete,  we  should  have  long 
since  invited  the  principal  British  island  to  withdraw  to  a  sphere  where 
the  temperature  is  reputed  to  be  more  than  tropical. 

The  first  view  of  Jamaica  and  of  its  capital  is  pleasing.  A  moun- 
tainous mass,  gradually  developing  on  the  horizon,  grows  into  a  series 
of  ranges  which  promise  to  rival  the  beauty  of  Porto  Rico.  Beyond 
a  long,  low,  narrow,  sand-reef  lies  an  immense  harbor,  on  the  further 
shore  of  which  Kingston  is  suspected,  rather  than  seen,  only  a  few 
wharves  and  one  domed  building  rising  above  the  wooded  plain  on 

403 


404          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

which  the  low  city  stands.  The  hills  behind  it  tumble  into  a  disordered 
heap  culminating  in  the  cloud-swathed  peak  of  what  are  most  fittingly 
called  the  Blue  Mountains.  On  this  strip  of  sand,  known  as  the  Pali- 
sadoes,  lies  buried  the  famous  buccaneer,  Sir  Henry  Morgan,  once 
governor  of  Jamaica,  and  at  the  extreme  end  of  it  stands  the  remnant 
of  the  old  capital,  Port  Royal.  In  the  good  old  days  of  pirates,  who 
made  it  their  headquarters,  the  depository  of  their  loot,  and  the  scene 
of  their  debauchery,  this  was  the  most  important  town  in  the  West 
Indies,  some  say  the  richest  and  most  wicked  spot  on  earth.  One  must 
be  chary,  however,  of  too  hastily  granting  such  superlatives.  An  earth- 
quake befell  it  one  day,  sinking  all  but  a  fragment  of  the  town  beneath 
the  sea,  and  a  new  capital,  named  Kingston,  was  founded  on  what 
promised  to  be  safer  ground  across  the  bay.  A  later  century  brought 
regret  that  a  still  more  distant  site  had  not  been  chosen.  To-day  Port 
Royal  consists  of  a  quarantine  station  and  a  small  village  so  isolated 
from  the  mainland  that  servant  women  brought  from  it  to  the  capital 
have  been  known  to  shriek  with  dismay  at  sight  of  their  first  cow. 
Ships  circling  the  reef  on  their  way  in  or  out  of  the  harbor  sail  over 
the  very  spot  where  pirates  once  held  their  revels,  and  negro  boatmen 
still  assert  that  on  stormy  evenings  one  may  hear  the  tolling  of  Port 
Royal's  cathedral  bell,  lying  fathoms  deep  beneath  the  waves. 

One's  first  impression  of  the  Jamaicans,  as  they  lounge  about  the 
wharf  eyeing  each  trunk  or  bundle  several  minutes  before  summoning 
up  the  energy  to  tackle  it,  is  that  they  are  far  less  courageous  in  the  face 
of  work  than  their  cousins,  the  Barbadians.  This  is  closely  followed 
by  the  discovery  that  Kingston  is  the  most  disappointing  town  in  the 
West  Indies.  With  the  exception  of  a  few  bright  yellow  public  build- 
ings and  a  scattered  block  or  two  of  new  business  houses,  it  is  a  negro 
slum,  spreading  for  miles  over  a  dusty  plain.  Scarcely  a  street  has 
even  the  pretense  of  a  pavement ;  the  few  sidewalks  that  exist  are 
blocked  by  stairways,  posts,  and  the  trash  of  a  disorderly  population, 
or  degenerate  every  few  yards  into  stretches  of  loose  stones  and  earth. 
The  only  building  worth  crossing  the  street  to  see  is  that  domed  structure 
sighted  from  the  bay,  the  Catholic  cathedral.  To  be  sure,  the  earth- 
quake wrought  great  havoc,  but  that  was  thirteen  years  ago,  time 
enough,  surely,  in  which  to  have  made  a  much  farther  advance  toward 
recovery. 

The  insolence  of  nearly  all  the  British  West  Indies  reaches  its  zenith 
in  Kingston.  Even  in  the  main  street  clamoring  black  urchins  and 
no  small  number  of  adults  trail  the  white  visitor,  heaping  upon  him 


AFRICAN  JAMAICA  405 

foul-mouthed  taunts,  all  but  snatching  his  possessions  out  of  his  hands 
in  broad  daylight ;  diseased  beggars  plod  beside  him  in  bare  feet  that 
seem  never  to  have  known  the  luxury  of  a  scrubbing,  scattering  their 
germs  in  a  fine  gray  limestone  dust  that  swirls  in  blinding  clouds  which 
envelop  everything  in  a  yellowish  veil  whenever  a  breath  of  wind  stirs 
or  a  street-car  sweeps  past.  Loose-mannered  black  females  ply  their 
trade  with  perfect  impunity,  shrieking  worse  than  indecencies  at  un- 
responsive passers-by;  assaults  and  robbery  are  frequent  even  by  day. 
One  must  be  vaccinated  and  often  quarantined  before  entering  Jamaica, 
yet  it  is  doubtful  whether  any  island  of  the  West  Indies  has  more 
evidence  of  disease  than  Kingston  itself.  Those  who  carry  firearms 
must  deposit  them  at  the  custom  house,  yet  with  the  possible  exception 
of  Hispaniola,  a  revolver  is  more  often  needed  in  the  Jamaican  capital 
than  anywhere  in  the  Caribbean,  as  several  harmless  Chinese  merchants 
learned  to  their  sorrow  during  our  brief  stay  there.  The  town  is  dis- 
mal, disageeable,  and  unsafe  for  self-respecting  white  women  at  any 
hour;  by  night  it  is  virtually  abandoned  to  the  lawless  black  hordes 
that  infest  it.  Weak  gas-lights  give  it  scarcely  a  suggestion  of  illumi- 
nation; swarms  of  negroes  shuffle  through  the  hot  dust,  cackling  their 
silly  laughter,  shouting  their  obscenity,  heckling,  if  not  attacking,  the 
rare  white  men  who  venture  abroad,  love-making  in  perfect  indifference 
to  the  proximity  of  other  human  beings,  while  the  pompous  black  police- 
men look  on  without  the  slightest  attempt  to  quell  the  disorder. 

The  white  residents  of  Kingston  seem  to  live  in  fear  of  the  black 
multitude  that  make  up  the  great  bulk  of  the  population.  When  hood- 
lums and  rowdies  jostle  them  on  the  street,  they  shift  aside  with  a  slink- 
ing air;  even  when  black  hooligans  cling  to  the  outside  of  street-cars 
pouring  out  obscene  language,  the  white  men  do  not  shield  their  wives 
and  daughters  beside  them  by  so  much  as  raising  their  voices  in  protest. 
When  cursing,  filthy  market  women  pile  their  baskets  and  unwashed 
produce  in  upon  them  and  crowd  their  own  women  out  of  their  places, 
they  bear  it  all  with  humble  resignation,  as  if  they  were  the  last  sur- 
vivors of  the  civilized  race  wholly  disheartened  by  an  invasion  of 
barbarian  tribes.  The  visitor  who  flees  all  this  and  retires  is  lucky  to 
catch  half  an  hour  of  unbroken  sleep  amid  the  endless  uproar  of 
shouting  negroes,  the  barking  of  innumerable  dogs,  and  the  crowing  of 
more  cocks  than  even  a  Latin-American  city  can  muster.  It  would  be 
difficult,  indeed,  to  say  anything  bad  enough  of  Kingston  to  give  the  full, 
hot,  dusty,  insolent,  half-ruined  picture.  The  traveler  will  see  all  he 
wants  and  more  of  the  capital  in  the  time  he  is  forced  to  remain  there 


406          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

on  the  way  to  or  from  his  ship  without  including  a  stay  in  his  itinerary. 
Port  au  Prince  is  clean  and  gentlemanly  in  comparison. 

The  electric  street-cars,  manned  by  ill-mannered  crews  and  rocking 
like  ships  in  a  storm  over  the  earthquake-undulated  ground,  run  far 
out  of  town.  They  must,  in  order  to  reach  anywhere  worth  going. 
Beyond  Half  Way  Tree  the  sloping  Liguanea  plain  grows  green  and 
the  rain  that  seems  never  to  descend  to  Kingston  gives  the  vegetation 
a  fresher  coat,  yet  the  way  is  still  lined  for  a  long  distance  by  negro 
shacks.  Only  when  one  reaches  the  open  meadows  of  Constant  Spring 
or  the  residence  section  served  by  another  branch  of  the  line  does  any- 
thing approaching  comfort,  cleanliness,  and  peace  appear.  Yet  even 
the  boasted  Hope  Gardens,  set  far  back  at  the  base  of  the  Blue  Mountain 
range,  have  little  of  the  open,  breezy  beauty  of  the  Queen's  Park  in 
Trinidad.  Until  he  has  drifted  farther  afield,  the  stranger  will  not 
cease  to  wonder  what  charms  bring  Jamaica  its  large  colony  of  winter 
tourists.  Even  then  he  must  conclude  that  the  prevalence  of  a  tongue 
closely  enough  resembling  English  to  be  sometimes  comprehensible  and 
the  legal  existence  of  John  Barleycorn  give  the  island  its  handicap  over 
Porto  Rico. 

Unlike  the  other  British  West  Indies,  Jamaica  clings  to  the  English 
monetary  system.  The  two  colonial  banks  issue  pound  notes  and 
higher,  which  are  easily  mistaken  for  those  in  dollars  from  the  other 
islands,  as  more  than  one  new  cashier  has  discovered  too  late  to  rescue 
his  first  month's  salary.  The  word  "  dollar  "  is  frequently  heard,  but 
it  is  merely  a  popular  euphonism  for  four  shillings.  Then  there  are 
local  pennies  and  half-pennies  of  nickel  alloy  that  are  not  readily  dis- 
tinguished from  the  English  shilling  and  two-shilling  pieces.  Jamaica 
belongs  to  the  postal  union,  but,  unlike  the  other  colonies  of  the  empire, 
she  does  not  subscribe  to  the  British  postal  convention  with  the  United 
States,  with  the  result  that  visitors  commonly  find  their  letters  taxed 
three  pence  extra  postage,  to  the  continual  advantage  of  the  local  gov- 
ernment. 

This  latter  gives  the  impression  of  being  both  backward  and  clumsy. 
A  governor  and  a  privy  council  of  not  more  than  eight  members  are 
appointed  by  the  crown.  The  legislative  body  is  presided  over  by  the 
former  and  consists  of  five  of  the  latter,  ten  other  crown  appointees,  and 
a  custos,  elected  by  the  people,  from  each  of  the  fourteen  parishes. 
British  male  subjects  of  twenty-one  who  occupy  house  property  and 
pay  taxes  of  thirty  shillings,  or  who  receive  a  nominal  salary  of  fifty 


AFRICAN  JAMAICA  407 

shillings  a  year,  are  qualified  voters.  A  recent  enactment  gives  the 
few  women  possessing  certain  qualifications  a  limited  right  to  vote. 
Parish  boards  can  recommend  legislation,  but  only  the  high  colonial 
officials  can  actually  make  laws  or  pay  out  money.  No  bills  involving 
questions  of  finance  are  passed  if  opposed  by  nine  elective  members, 
yet  those  same  custodes  cannot  initiate  legislation.  Moreover,  the  king 
may  disallow  any  law  within  two  years  of  its  passing.  The  result  is 
a  division  of  responsibility  from  power  and  frequent  deadlocks  that 
make  the  apparent  autonomy  of  the  island  a  continual  process  of 
"  standing  pat." 

The  few  white  officials  are  slow,  antiquated,  precedence-ridden,  in 
striking  contrast  to  the  young  and  bustling,  if  sometimes  poorly  in- 
formed rulers  of  our  own  dependencies.  Indeed,  a  journey  to  the 
West  Indies  is  apt  to  cause  the  American  to  rearrange  his  notions  of 
the  relative  efficiency  of  the  English,  and  the  French  or  ourselves,  as 
colonizers.  We  are  sadly  in  need  of  a  Colonial  Office  and  a  corps  of 
trained  officials  to  administer  what  we  dislike  to  call  our  colonies,  but 
even  our  deserving  Democrats,  or  Republicans,  as  the  case  may  be, 
scarcely  hamper  the  development  of  our  dependencies  as  thoroughly  as 
do  its  medieval-minded  rulers  that  of  Jamaica.  An  example  or  two 
will  suffice  to  illustrate  the  point.  The  government  railway  was  lifted 
out  of  its  slough  of  despond  and  rehabilitated  by  an  experienced  ad- 
ministrator. When  he  found,  however,  that  his  £1000  a  year  did  not 
suffice  to  keep  him  in  shoes,  the  insular  powers  let  him  go  rather  than 
increase  his  pittance.  Back  in  the  Middle  Ages  that  was  a  generous 
stipend  for  railway  managers.  By  a  recent  law  the  Government  of 
Jamaica  has  decided  to  take  over  the  making,  and  later  the  distribution, 
of  rum.  At  the  time  of  our  departure  it  was  advertising  for  "  an 
experienced  superintendent"  at  the  breath-taking  salary  of  £2000  a 
year!  No  doubt  there  was  a  rush  of  managers  of  Cuban  sugar  cen- 
trals contending  for  this  noble  prize. 

It  may  be  of  interest  to  know  that  Jamaica  is  livid  with  fear  that  she, 
too,  may  be  struck  by  prohibition,  and  is  hastily  erecting  all  manner  of 
protective  lightning-rods.  Her  newspapers  carry  columns  of  argu- 
ments pro  and  con,  most  of  them  clinched  with  quotations  from  the 
Bible,  as  if  that  had  anything  to  do  with  the  case.  Reading  the  im- 
passioned utterances  of  the  "  wets,"  one  might  suppose  that  the  United 
States  is  in  the  act  of  organizing  a  great  army  of  grape- juicers  to  de- 
scend upon  Jamaica  and  wrest  from  her  all  bottled  joy  in  life,  while 
the  casual  observer  gets  the  impression  that  the  great  majority  of  the 


408  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

islanders  would  rather  die  at  the  doors  of  their  rum  distilleries  and 
liquor  shops  than  suffer  that  ignominious  fate. 

With  the  exception  of  Barbados,  where  special  conditions  exist, 
Jamaica  has  remained  a  possession  of  the  British  crown  longer  than 
any  other  land,  and  the  influence  of  the  English  on  the  African  race  can 
perhaps  nowhere  be  better  studied.  It  is  not  particularly  flattering. 
The  Jamaican  has  all  the  faults  of  his  rulers  and  his  own  negro  delin- 
quencies to  boot.  He  is  slow-witted,  inhospitable,  arrogant  when  he 
dares  to  be,  cringing  when  he  feels  that  to  be  to  his  advantage.  The 
illegitimate  birth-rate  is  exceedingly  high,  sexual  morality  extremely 
shaky  among  the  masses.  Though  the  country  people  are  sometimes 
pleasing  in  their  simplicity,  they  quickly  take  on  the  unpleasant  char- 
acteristics of  the  town  dwellers  when  they  come  in  contact  with  them, 
the  most  conspicuous  being  an  unbridled  insolence  and  a  constant  desire 
to  annoy  what  may  quite  justly  be  called  their  betters.  Part  of  this 
rudeness  is  due,  no  doubt,  to  the  same  cause  as  that  of  our  laboring 
classes  —  a  misguided  attempt  to  prove  their  equality  by  scorning  the 
amenities  of  social  intercourse.  A  large  percentage  of  it,  however, 
is  easily  recognizable  as  native  African  barbarism,  which  increases  by 
leaps  and  bounds  as  the  suppression  of  former  days  weakens.  If  he  is 
working  for  you  or  selling  you  something,  the  Jamaican  can  be  softly 
courteous ;  when  he  has  no  such  reasons  to  repress  his  natural  brutality 
his  impudence  is  colossal. 

Even  more  than  in  the  other  British  islands  the  masses  of  Jamaica 
have  been  "  spoiled  "  by  the  war.  Official  reports  credit  the  "  B.  W.  I." 
regiments  with  "  excelling  in  many  acts  of  bravery  " ;  private  informa- 
tion, even  from  some  of  the  very  men  who  dictated  the  official  reports, 
has  a  different  tenor.  According  to  this  they  were  useless  in  actual  war- 
fare, not  a  man  of  them  having  died  facing  the  enemy;  even  as  labor 
battalions  they  were  not  worth  their  keep,  and  their  conduct  was  such 
that  both  the  French  and  the  Italians  protested  against  their  being  sta- 
tioned within  reach  of  the  civil  population.  Whichever  of  these  reports 
is  more  trustworthy,  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  hospitality  shown  these 
crude-minded  blacks  by  a  certain  class  of  European  women,  and  the 
fuss  made  over  them  upon  their  return,  have  given  their  rulers  a  prob- 
lem which  will  scarcely  be  solved  during  the  present  generation. 

Those  who  have  spent  their  lives  with  the  Jamaica  negro  —  and  to  a 
certain  extent  he  is  typical  of  his  race  in  all  the  British  West  Indies  — 
agree  in  the  main  with  the  casual  observer  in  the  summing  up  of  his 
characteristics.  He  is  apt  to  take  little  pride  in  his  work  and  to  meet 


AFRICAN  JAMAICA  409 

any  criticism  with  "  Cho,  too  much  boderation ;  can't  do  better."  He 
sees  little  immorality  in  lying,  and  the  man  who  expects  truth  from 
him  according  to  the  Anglo-Saxon  standard  will  be  grievously  dis- 
appointed. Exactness  in  such  matters  as  age,  distance,  names,  and  the 
like  means  nothing  to  him.  His  answer  to  a  roadside  inquiry  is  almost 
certain  to  be  "  not  too  far,"  and  his  age  may  change  by  ten  years  or 
more  within  the  space  of  two  sentences.  He  has  the  child's  tendency 
to  exaggeration  and  the  building  up  of  stories  out  of  whole  cloth,  yet 
he  can  scarcely  plead  the  same  excuse  as  the  child,  for  his  imagination 
is,  at  best,  in  a  comatose  state.  Gratitude  seems  to  have  been  com- 
pletely left  out  of  his  make-up.  He  dearly  loves  a  bargain  or  a  dispute ; 
the  shop-keeper  who  has  only  one  price  arouses  his  hostility,  and  to 
appear  in  court  either  as  plaintiff,  defendant,  or  witness  is  one  of  his 
favorite  forms  of  amusement. 

"  Like  the  Irish,"  as  one  English  Jamaican  puts  it,  "  he  does  himself 
more  credit  abroad  than  at  home ;  like  them  he  is  quite  ready  to  emigrate 
and  goes  where  the  dollar  calls,  rather  than  aping  the  Englishman,  who 
prefers  a  competency  under  the  Union  Jack  to  possible  riches  under 
another  flag.  If  there  is  one  thing  he  dislikes  more  than  another," 
continues  this  authority,  "  it  is  sarcasm.  He  will  stand  any  amount  of 
'cussing/  but  he  keenly  resents  ridicule  of  any  kind."  What  this  critic 
does  not  add  is  that  the  sarcasm  must  be  extremely  broad  if  the  average 
Jamaican  is  to  recognize  it  as  such. 

The  lower  classes  are  much  given  to  "teefing"  small  articles,  par- 
ticularly food.  One  might  almost  say  that  the  chief  curse  of  the  island 
is  "  praedial  larceny,"  as  they  still  spell  it  in  Jamaica,  which  means 
the  stealing  of  growing  crops.  Newspapers,  public  reports,  and  pri- 
vate conversations  contain  constant  references  to  this  crime,  prosecu- 
tions for  which  nearly  doubled  in  the  year  following  the  war.  Many 
people  no  longer  take  the  trouble  to  plant  a  crop  of  ground  provisions, 
knowing  that  they  will  almost  certainly  be  stolen  by  black  loafers  before 
the  owners  themselves  can  gather  them.  The  main  faults  of  the  masses, 
—  insolence,  lying,  illegitimacy,  slackness  in  work,  and  thieving, —  can 
scarcely  be  laid  to  drink ;  for  though  Jamaica  rum  is  famous  and  drunk- 
enness is  on  the  increase,  the  women,  who  drink  comparatively  little, 
are  as  bad  as  the  men  in  all  these  matters. 

Prisons  and  penal  institutions  are  more  in  evidence  in  Jamaica  than 
schools.  While  the  latter  are  small  and  inconspicuous,  the  prison  in 
Kingston  is  larger  than  Sing  Sing,  in  Spanish  Town  there  is  another 
almost  as  large,  and  many  more  scattered  throughout  the  island.  The 


410          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

police,  who  are  virtually  all  jet  black,,  are  poorly  disciplined  and  much 
inclined  to  look  misdemeanors,  indecency,  and  even  crime  in  the  face 
without  being  moved  to  action.  Pompously  proud  and  inclined  to  inso- 
lence, also,  they  seldom  fail  to  take  advantage  of  their  power  over 
white  men  whenever  it  seems  safe  to  do  so.  For  there  is  little  color-line 
in  legal  matters,  and  not  only  can  whites  be  arrested  by  black  officers, 
but  they  run  a  splendid  chance  of  being  tried  by  colored  magistrates. 
The  tendency  to  give  the  higher  positions  of  responsibility  in  the  police 
force  to  young  Englishmen  who  have  been  decorated  in  the  war  or  who 
have  influential  friends,  yet  who  are  more  noted  for  their  card  playing 
and  dancing  than  for  ability  or  diligence  in  their  new  calling,  has  en- 
hanced a  situation  which  the  better  class  of  Jamaicans  view  with  alarm. 
There  are  one  hundred  and  sixteen  constabulary  stations  on  the  island 
and  a  force  of  a  thousand  regular  constables,  supplemented  by  almost 
as  many  district  deputies,  yet  Jamaica  is  by  no  means  so  well  policed  as 
Porto  Rico  with  its  insular  force  of  scarcely  eight  hundred. 

Even  the  friendly  critic  already  quoted  finds  little  to  praise  in  the 
Jamaican  except  his  cheerfulness,  his  loyalty,  within  limits,  to  those 
he  serves,  and  his  kindness  to  his  own  people,  and  he  admits  that  the 
first  of  these  qualities  is  often  based  on  lack  of  ambition,  "  though  it  is 
nevertheless  pleasant  to  live  with."  On  the  other  hand,  lack  of  equal 
opportunity  is  not  without  its  effect  on  the  negro  character.  Jamaica 
suffers  from  the  same  big  estate  and  primogeniture  troubles  that  hamper 
the  masses  in  England.  Slightly  larger  than  Porto  Rico,  with  five 
hundred  thousand  acres  still  held  by  the  crown  and  with  only  half  of 
the  remainder  under  cultivation,  the  rest  being  wooded  or  "  ruinate," 
as  they  call  it  in  Jamaica,  the  island  is  principally  in  the  hands  of  the 
whites.  These  strive  to  keep  their  estates  intact  and  hold  the  negro  in 
economic  subjection. 

"  Negroes  who  come  back  from  Panama  or  Cuba  with  in  some  cases 
hundreds  of  pounds  are  seldom  able  to  buy  property,"  complained  one  of 
their  sponsors.  "  It  is  only  when  the  white  man  becomes  very  poor 
or  the  negro  very  rich  that  he  can  get  a  chunk  of  some  big  estate.  The 
big  owners  too  often  pasture,  rather  than  plant,  their  best  land  and 
rent  out  the  worst  to  the  small  peasants,  at  one  pound  an  acre  a  year. 
If  the  rented  land  turns  out  to  be  too  stony  or  otherwise  useless,  that 
is  the  peasant's  loss  and  the  owner's  gain."  One  difficulty  in  bettering 
this  condition,  however,  is  the  disinclination  of  the  peasantry  to  pay 
regularly.  On  the  whole,  the  planters  show  little  generosity  toward 
their  laborers,  thereby  increasing  the  feeling  between  the  two  races. 


AFRICAN  JAMAICA  411 

Though  it  is  the  most  populous  of  the  British  West  Indies,  and  the 
largest,  unless  one  follows  the  English  habit  of  including  British  Guiana, 
Jamaica  is  much  less  densely  inhabited  than  Porto  Rico,  for  it  is  natural 
that  two  islands  so  nearly  alike  in  size,  situation,  and  formation  should 
constantly  suggest  comparison.  When  the  British  took  Jamaica  from 
the  Spaniards  in  1655,  it  had  but  4200  inhabitants.  Half  a  century 
later  the  population  was  more  than  two  thirds  negro.  In  1842,  four 
years  after  the  abolition  of  slavery,  the  first  shipload  of  indentured  East 
Indians  arrived,  but  this  practice  had  almost  ceased  long  before  the 
Indian  Government  recently  put  a  legal  end  to  it.  The  Chinese  coolies 
were  tried  for  a  time,  but  only  in  small  numbers,  and  their  descendants 
now  confine  themselves  almost  entirely  to  keeping  what  we  would  call 
"  grocery  stores."  Both  the  Hindus  and  the  Chinese,  and  for  that 
matter  the  native  whites,  speak  the  slovenly  Jamaican  dialect,  and  there 
remains  little  of  the  Oriental  garb  and  racial  mixture  so  conspicuous  in 
Trinidad. 

"  On  my  arrival  in  Jamaica  in  1795,"  says  one  of  its  governors,  "  I 
found  a  vast  assembly  of  French  emigrants  of  all  ranks,  qualities  and 
colors,  who  had  fled  from  the  horrors  of  Santo  Domingo"  —  by  which, 
of  course,  he  meant  Haiti.  Many  Cubans  came  also  when  their  island 
was  under  Spanish  rule.  But  all  these  elements  scarcely  moderate 
Jamaica's  distinctly  African  complexion.  The  visitor  is  apt  to  be 
astounded  by  the  blackness  of  the  great  bulk  of  the  population.  The 
percentage  of  full  blacks  is  in  striking  contrast  to  the  mulatto  majority 
in  the  French  islands,  where  the  mixture  of  races  is  not  very  sternly 
frowned  upon,  and  still  more  so  to  the  Spanish-American  tropics,  where 
micegenation  is  so  common  that  nearly  everyone  is  a  "  colored  person." 
By  her  last  census,  which  is  nearly  ten  years  old,  Jamaica  claims  831,383 
inhabitants,  of  whom  15,605  were  white,  17,380  Hindus,  and  2,111 
Chinese.  The  fact  that  she  has  barely  two  hundred  to  the  square 
mile,  as  compared  to  twelve  hundred  in  Barbados,  is  probably  not 
without  its  bearing  in  the  visible  difference  of  energy  between  the  two 
islands. 


The  color-line  in  Jamaica,  and  it  is  more  or  less  typical  of  that  in 
all  the  British  West  Indies,  falls  somewhere  between  our  own  and 
the  rather  hazy  one  in  vogue  in  the  French  islands. 

"  I  think  the  English  individually,"  said  a  Jamaican  sambo,  that 
is  a  three  fourths  negro,  who  had  worked  on  the  Canal  Zone,  "  like  us 


412          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

black  people  still  less  than  you  Americans  do;  but  governmentally 
they  treat  us  as  equals,  and  you  do  not.  Yet  in  some  ways  I  prefer 
the  American  system.  An  Englishman  says  you  are  his  equal,  but 
you  had  better  not  act  as  if  you  were.  The  American  says,  '  You  're 
a  damned  nigger  and  you  know  it,'  and  there  is  no  hypocrisy  in  the 
matter." 

Strictly  speaking,  there  are  two  color-lines  in  the  British  West  In- 
dies. Unlike  the  United  States,  where  "  black "  and  "  colored  "  are 
synonomous  terms  when  applied  to  the  negro  race,  there  is  a  middle 
class  of  "colored  people,"  as  there  are  Eurasians  in  India,  though 
actual  membership  in  it  implies  a  certain  degree  of  education,  culture, 
wealth,  or  influence.  There  are  "  colored  "  men  who  rank  themselves 
and  are  ranked  as  negroes,  working  shoulder  to  shoulder  with  them  in 
the  fields;  there  are  others  who  sit  side  by  side  with  their  white 
brethren  on  the  judicial  bench  and  reach  high  rank  in  church,  politics, 
medicine,  law,  and  commerce.  Color  may  almost  be  said  to  be  no 
bar  to  promotion  in  official  life,  within  limits.  This  middle  set  is  ex- 
tremely assertive  in  its  pride  and,  on  the  whole,  is  more  disliked  by 
the  negroes  than  are  the  whites  themselves. 

On  a  Jamaican  train  one  day  I  fell  into  conversation  with  an  octa- 
roon  school-teacher.  He  was  a  forcible  fellow  who  had  evidently  re- 
tained most  of  the  qualities  of  his  white  ancestors.  For  some  time  I 
avoided  any  reference  to  the  matter  of  human  complexions,  having  no 
desire  to  offend  him.  Before  long,  however,  he  began  to  expatiate  on 
the  necessity  of  keeping  the  "  niggers  "  in  their  place. 

"  Hoho,"  said  I  to  myself,  "  so  you  consider  yourself  a  white 
man?" 

But  he  did  not,  for  soon  he  began  to  explain  the  position  of  "  us 
colored  people."  He  often  met  fellow-teachers  who  were  negroes,  he 
said,  but  no  negro  ever  entered  his  house,  nor  had  he  ever  introduced 
his  daughter  to  one  of  them. 

"  The  nigger,"  he  went  on,  "  always  gets  cocky  when  he  is  given 
either  authority  or  encouragement.  If  I  invite  a  negro  to  my  house, 
the  next  thing  I  know  he  is  proposing  to  my  daughter  and  I  have  to  kick 
him  out,  for  in  Jamaica  the  colored  girl  forever  loses  caste  by  marry- 
ing a  black  man.  I  would  rather  die  than  marry  a  negro  woman, 
yet  I  would  no  sooner  marry  a  white  woman,  because  it  would  be  hell 
in  a  few  years.  At  the  same  time  I  know  that  a  white  man  would 
have  the  same  fear,  if  I  were  his  guest.  So  I  do  not  go  to  his  house, 
even  if  I  am  asked,  for  he  would  be  patronizing;  and  I  do  not  invite 


AFRICAN  JAMAICA  413 

a  white  man  to  my  house  because  I  know  he  would  feel  he  was  doing 
me  a  favor  and  an  honor. 

"  By  the  way,"  he  asked  later,  "  how  would  I  get  on  in  the  United 
States?  How  did  you  know  I  am  colored?  My  hair  is  pretty  good." 
He  smiled  rather  pathetically,  passing  a  hand  over  it. 

It  was  straight  as  my  own,  and  his  skin  was  no  darker  than  that  of 
many  a  Spaniard.  Yet,  though  he  might  not  have  been  suspected  in 
Paris,  or  possibly  even  in  London,  any  American  would  have  recog- 
nized him  as  a  negro  at  a  glance.  I  told  him  so  frankly,  and  he  ac- 
cepted the  statement  with  consummate  good  sense.  Thanks  to  the 
point  of  view  he  had  expressed,  there  is  little  further  mixture  of  races 
going  on  in  the  British  West  Indies,  with  the  possible  exception  of 
Trinidad,  and  the  three  castes  will  probably  remain  intact  and  will  each 
have  to  work  out  its  own  destiny. 

Included  in  the  government  of  Jamaica  are  the  Turks  and  Caicos 
Islands,  which  belong  geographically  to  the  Bahamas,  as  they  once  did 
officially.  Transportation  between  them  and  the  mother  island  is 
worse  than  uncertain,  and  they  depend  chiefly  on  their  salt  beds  and 
emigration  for  their  livelihood.  There  are  a  few  small  islands  scat- 
tered close  along  the  coast  of  Jamaica,  but  none  of  them  is  of  any  im- 
portance. 

The  Jamaica  Government  Railway  is  one  of  the  oldest  in  the  world, 
having  been  first  opened  to  traffic  in  1845.  It  is  almost  two  hundred 
miles  long,  running  diagonally  across  the  island  from  Kingston  to 
Montego  Bay,  and  north  and  eastward  to  Port  Antonio,  with  two 
small  branches.  The  fares  are  high,  being  about  seven  cents  a  mile 
first-class  and  half  as  much  for  second.  The  latter  is  really  third-class 
in  all  but  name,  with  hard  wooden  benches  and  scanty  accommoda- 
tions, and  carries  virtually  all  the  traveling  population.  In  it  one  will 
find  the  poorer  whites,  such  as  ministers  with  their  thin,  hungry-look- 
ing wives,  and  other  poverty-stricken  mortals,  contrasting  strongly 
with  the  "  husky,"  broad-shouldered  negroes  with  their  velvety  black 
skins,  beautiful  as  mere  types  of  the  animal  kingdom.  Here  and  there, 
perhaps,  sits  a  young  Chinaman,  inscrutable,  seeing  and  thinking  of 
it  all,  no  doubt,  yet  never  giving  a  hint  of  his  thoughts,  a  Celestial  still 
though  born  on  the  island.  Then  there  is  a  scattering  of  all  grades  of 
yellow,  some  of  them  so  much  so  that  they  try  to  smile  one  into  the 
belief  that  they  are  white.  In  a  corner  of  one  of  these  coaches  is  a 
negro  in  a  wire  cage,  the  railway  post-office.  First-class  consists  of 
a  little  eight-seat  compartment  in  the  end  of  one,  or  at  most  two, 


414          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

coaches,  stiff-backed,  hot,  dusty,  commonly  filled  with  tobacco-smoke 
and  scarcely  a  fit  place  for  a  white  woman.  Occasionally  it  is  crowded 
with  Chinese  shopkeepers  and  the  bundles  of  wares  they  would  not 
find  room  for  in  the  other  class,  but  more  often  it,  too,  is  distinctly 
African  in  tinge.  For  like  the  island,  the  "  J.  G.  R."  is  overwhelmingly 
negro.  All  the  trainmen  are  full  blacks,  as  are  virtually  all  the  pas- 
sengers. The  "  trainboy "  is  a  haughty  negro  woman  in  near-silk 
garb,  enormous  earrings,  and  a  white,  nurse-like  cap,  who  sells  chiefly 
beer  and  never  calls  out  her  wares.  In  the  island  dialect  a  local  train 
is  a  "  walkin'  train,"  and  all  Jamaican  trains  fall  into  this  category,  as 
do  all  those  in  the  West  Indies  except  in  Cuba  and,  to  a  slight  degree, 
Trinidad.  There  are  no  train  manners.  In  a  Spanish  country  if  you 
put  so  much  as  a  cane  in  a  seat  your  possession  of  it  is  assured  and 
respected  to  the  end  of  the  journey.  Put  all  your  baggage,  and  your 
coat  and  hat  in  addition,  into  a  Jamaican  train-seat  and  you  will  prob- 
ably come  back  to  find  your  possessions  tossed  on  the  floor  and  some 
impudent  black  wench  occupying  your  place.  Why  the  "  J.  G.  R."  is 
so  ungodly  as  to  run  Sunday  trains  on  its  Port  Antonio  branch,  I  do 
not  know.  They  are  about  the  only  things  that  do  move  in  the  British 
West  Indies  on  the  Sabbath. 

From  Kingston  the  train  jolts  away  through  the  swirling  dust 
across  a  flat,  Arizona-like  plain  studded  with  cactus,  though  moder- 
ately green.  Soon  come  broad  stretches  of  banana  fields,  bananas 
planted  in  endless  rows  down  which  one  can  look  as  through  arch- 
ways, many  of  the  plants  heavy  with  their  bunches  nearing  maturity, 
others  showing  little  more  than  the  big  purple  flower  shaped  like  a 
swollen,  unhusked  ear  of  corn,  along  the  stem  of  which  a  miniature 
bunch  is  just  starting.  Between  these  are  other  fields,  with  trees 
girdled  and  blackened  where  some  forest  is  being  killed  to  make  way 
for  more  bananas.  Negro  women  with  oval  market  baskets  on  their 
heads  tramp  energetically  along  the  white  highway;  now  and  then 
the  refined  features  of  a  Hindu  break  the  monotony  of  brutal  negro 
faces,  though  he  has  lost  his  distinctive  garb.  Then  comes  the  prison 
farm  of  St.  Catherine's  Parish,  with  its  green  gardens,  its  irrigation 
ditches  filled  with  clear  water,  and  its  horde  of  prison  laborers.  But 
the  train  is  already  coming  to  a  screeching  halt  in  the  former  capital 
of  the  island,  twelve  miles  from  Kingston. 

As  in  Trinidad  the  Spaniards  preferred  an  inland  site  for  their 
principal  city,  and  this  Villa  de  la  Vega  was  founded  by  Columbus's 
son  Diego  after  they  had  abandoned  their  first  capital  of  Sevilla  Nueva 


AFRICAN  JAMAICA  4!5 

on  the  north  coast.     The  English,  being  a  maritime  people  before  all 
else,  first  set  up  their  government  in  Port  Royal,  but  even  they  could 
not  endure  a  capital  that  had  sunk  beneath  the  sea,  and  returned  to  the 
old  Spanish  headquarters.     This  had  come  to  be  called  St.  Jago  de  la 
Vega,  a  name  still  to  be  found  on  ancient  mile-posts  along  the  roads 
of  the  vicinity,  but  that  was  too  much  of  an  effort  for  the  thick  negro 
tongues  and  the  place  was  rechristened  Spanish  Town.     It  remained 
the  capital  of  the  island  until  1870,  and  still  retains  the  records'  of- 
fice.    Set  in  a  flat  plain  half  covered  with  bushy  trees,  it  is  but  a  very 
trifle  cooler  and  not  much  more  pleasant  than  Kingston.     There  are 
still  many  Spanish  names  and  features  in  Spanish  Town,  but  only 
one  family  which  speaks  that  language,  and  very  few  Catholics.     An 
old  red  brick  cathedral  recently  restored  is  said  to  be  the  oldest  in  the 
British  colonies,  Anglican  now,  of  course,  and  open  only  during  serv- 
ices.    Spanish  Town  has  scarcely  ten  thousand  inhabitants,  though  it 
disputes  with  Montego  Bay  and  Port  Antonio  the  second  place  among 
towns  of  the  island.     In  its  center  is  still  a  kind  of  Spanish  plaza,  with 
only  its  grass  and  trees  left,  and  surrounded  by  old  yellow  brick  gov- 
ernment buildings  —  all  of  which,  one  learns  with  surprise,  were  built 
by  the  English.     Under  the  portico  of  one  of  these  is  a  statue  of  Rod- 
ney, who  raised  the  Union  Jack  over  the  French  in  the  West  Indies, 
dressed  in  that  glorified  undershirt  or  incomplete  Roman  toga  worn 
no  doubt  by  all  British  admirals  in  those  heated  days.     The  old  capital 
has  an  open  market  which  is  a  trifle  better  dressed,  though  more  bestial 
and  insolent  than  those  of  Haiti,  and  its  only  hotel  is  a  negro  joint  over- 
run with  plate-licking  cats  and  setting  hens,  which  masquerades  under 
the  name  of  "  Marble  Hall." 

Though  it  was  fora  century  and  a  half  under  Spanish  rule,  Jamaica 
shows  few  signs  of  Iberian  influence,  except  in  its  geographical  names. 
Some  of  these  remain  pure,  but  the  majority  of  them  have  been  cor- 
rupted by  the  thick-tongued  negroes  into  something  only  faintly  re- 
sembling the  original.  Thus  Managua  has  become  Moneague,  Agua 
Alta  is  now  Wag  Water,  a  place  once  noted  for  its  manteca,  or  lard,  is 
Montego  Bay,  and  Boca  del  Agua  has  adopted  the  alias  of  Bog  Walk. 
WTien  England  wrested  Jamaica  from  Spain  the  property  which  the 
Spaniards  could  not  take  with  them  they  largely  destroyed,  so  that 
no  real  Spanish  building  has  remained  intact.  Unlike  Trinidad  the 
Spanish  tongue  is  almost  never  heard  in  Jamaica. 

The  train  continues  across  the  flat  plain,  everywhere  thinly  covered 
with  big  bushy  trees.  Indeed  one  of  the  stations  is  called  Bushy 


416          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

Park,  where  an  old  brick  aqueduct  which  looks  Spanish,  though  it 
probably  is  not,  still  carries  water  across  the  cane-fields.  Muscular 
negro  youths  in  rags,  either  without  the  possibility  or  the  desire  to  earn 
better  garments,  swarm  about  the  stations  and  into  the  cars,  pouncing 
upon  the  luggage  of  any  traveler  wno  shows  the  slightest  sign  of  de- 
scending. An  hour  and  a  half  from  Kingston,  beyond  the  station  for 
Old  Harbour,  the  land  begins  slowly  and  gradually  to  rise,  and  one  is 
soon  overlooking  a  vast  tree-bushy  rather  than  forested  country. 
Broad  fields  of  henequen,  jute  sisal,  or  rope-cactus,  as  you  choose  to 
call  it,  are  planted  in  rows  on  rather  arid  looking  ground  completely 
covered  with  high  brown  grass.  The  first  suggestion  of  beauty  in  the 
landscape  appears  near  May  Pen.  A  "  pen  "  in  the  Jamaica  dialect 
means  a  grassy  field  or  a  pasture,  and  "  pen  keeping  "  is  the  local  term 
for  breeding  and  raising  cattle.  Here  and  there  the  inevitable  old 
square  brick  chimneys  of  sugarmills  dot  the  ever  descending  plain, 
which  at  length  begins  to  be  hidden  by  low  foothills.  Sapling-like  for- 
ests spring  up  along  the  way,  and  the  logwood  that  grows  in  scat- 
tered quantities  all  over  the  island  lies  piled  at  the  railway  stations, 
the  outer  layer  of  wood  roughly  hacked  away,  leaving  only  the  red- 
dish heart.  Schooners  carry  north  many  cargoes  of  these  crooked 
logs  and  the  still  more  awkward  stumps,  while  several  mills  on  the 
island  turn  it  into  an  extract  that  is  shipped  in  barrels  to  color  our 
garments  dark-blue  or  black.  Jamaica  produces  also  a  certain  amount 
of  fustic,  a  smooth,  straight  tree  which  gives  a  khaki  color. 

Soon  the  soil,  or  "  sile,"  as  they  call  it  in  Jamaica,  turns  reddish 
and  clearings  and  habitations  become  rare.  By  this  time  we  were  the 
only  white  persons  on  the  train  and  shortly  after  that  the  only  pas- 
sengers in  the  first-class  coach.  A  larger  engine  took  us  in  tow  and 
we  climbed  865  feet  in  the  next  six  miles.  Dense,  almost  unpopulated 
forests,  like  some  sections  of  eastern  Cuba,  covered  the  ever  more 
rugged  landscape ;  but  if  the  scenery  flanking  Jamaica's  railway  is  more 
striking  than  that  visible  from  the  trains  in  Porto  Rico,  it  is  because 
it  passes  through  rather  than  around  the  island,  for  on  the  whole  our 
own  West  Indian  colony  is  more  beautiful.  The  train  continues  to 
climb  until  it  attains  an  altitude  of  1680  feet  at  Green  Vale,  then  de- 
scends steadily  past  several  villages  of  no  great  importance,  through 
numerous  "  tubes,"  as  Jamaicans  call  a  tunnel,  now  and  then  past  long 
stretches  of  bananas,  otherwise  through  almost  a  wilderness  broken 
only  by  tiny  corn  or  cane-fields  about  the  rare  negro  shacks.  At  Cata- 
dupa  it  breaks  out  upon  a  vast  vista  of  wooded  valley,  and  sinks  at 


AFRICAN  JAMAICA  417 

length  into  a  square  mile  of  sugar-cane  beyond  which  lies  Montego  Bay 
on  the  northern  coast. 

But  we  had  long  since  left  it,  to  drive  by  "  buggy  " —  our  American 
term  for  a  country  carriage  has  somehow  become  acclimated  in  Jamaica 
—  into  the  Manchester  hills.  The  trip  from  Kingston  to  Mandeville, 
2200  feet  above  the  sea,  is  like  one  from  down-town  New  York  to 
the  Berkshires  in  July.  Indeed  the  visitor  to  Manchester  Parish 
might  almost  fancy  himself  in  Connecticut,  in  spite  of  the  prevalence 
of  negroes.  The  gray  stone  fences,  with  big  horses  ankle-deep  in  the 
grassy  pastures  behind  them,  the  rolling  stretches  of  corn,  the  very 
birds  bear  out  the  illusion.  Even  the  clumps  of  bamboo  seem  to  be 
growing  on  Connecticut  hillsides ;  the  orchids  and  treeferns  contrast 
strangely  with  a  weather  and  landscape  of  the  temperate  zone ;  Mande- 
ville itself,  long  famous  as  a  health  resort  for  the  residents  of  the 
sweltering  coast  lands,  has  that  air  of  calm  repose  of  some  old  New 
England  village. 

Carriage  driving  has  more  nearly  survived  modern  invention  in 
Jamaica  than  in  any  other  of  the  West  Indies,  perhaps  for  the  double 
reason  of  the  high  price  of  "  gas  "  and  the  existence  of  good  horses. 
The  Jamaican  horses  are  famed  throughout  the  Caribbean  for  their 
size  and  endurance  —  also  for  their  hard  gait  as  riding  animals.  They 
are  not  handsome,  being  usually  lank  and  goose-rumped,  but  they  are 
so  docile  they  may  sometimes  be  driven  without  being  broken  and  they 
retain  the  size  of  their  English  ancestors  instead  of  degenerating  into 
the  runts  of  most  tropical  America,  and  they  are  unusually  free  from 
disease.  Breeders  claim  that  they  remain  so  sound  in  spite  of  the 
enervating  climate  largely  because  of  the  limestone  formation  of  the 
island  and  the  recuperative  effects  of  its  high  altitudes.  At  any  rate 
there  are  few  places  where  a  negro-driven  buggy  and  pair  cannot  be 
had  on  short  notice.  "Many  splendid  draft  mules  are  also  bred  on  the 
island. 

I  preferred,  however,  to  set  out  on  foot  from  Mandeville  for  a  jaunt 
diagonally  across  the  island.  Walking  is  not  a  favorite  recreation 
among  either  the  white  or  the  "  colored  "  castes,  though  there  is  no 
good  reason  other  than  inertia  why  it  should  not  be  in  the  temperate 
highlands.  Jamaica  has  more  than  two  thousand  miles  of  good  roads, 
far  outdoing  those  of  Porto  Rico  in  extent,  though  they  are  narrower 
and  sometimes  poorly  kept,  partly  because  many  of  them  are  parochial 
roads,  unknown  in  the  neighboring  island.  "  Fingerboards "  point 


the  way  everywhere.  The  high  altitudes  of  Manchester,  as  of  several 
other  parishes,  lack  only  the  shade-grown  tobacco  fields  and  the  varie- 
gated tints  of  intensive  cultivation  to  rival  in  beauty  our  own  West 
Indian  colony.  Birds  are  always  singing,  scattered  little  white  houses 
speckle  the  immense  green  hillsides,  the  road  banks  are  often  carpeted 
with  "  wandering  Jew  "  enough  to  make  the  fortune  of  an  American 
florist,  or  they  are  hung  with  tapestries  of  what  look  like  daisies,  while 
other  flowers  bloom  on  every  hand.  In  a  climate  pleasant  even  at  noon- 
day one  would  scarcely  recognize  the  Berkshire  landscape  as  tropical 
but  for  a  banana,  a  giant  fern,  or  a  palm  tree  here  and  there  in  the 
foreground. 

Ltttle  stone  and  brick  coffee  floors,  called  "  barbecues  "  in  Jamaica, 
frequently  flank  the  roadway.  Manchester  parish  grows  much  cof- 
fee, though  it  rarely  reaches  the  American  market,  for  England  con- 
sumes all  the  island  produces.  Here  the  bushes  are  usually  unshaded, 
protecting  trees  being  unnecessary,  if  not  harmful,  at  such  an  altitude. 
Instead  of  the  little  toy  donkey-carts  of  Barbados  there  are  big  rat- 
tling mule  wagons.  Donkeys  are  sometimes  ridden,  occasionally  used 
as  pack-animals.  The  peasants  have  little  of  the  insolence  of  the 
towns,  but  greet  the  traveler  with  a  kind  of  military  salute  and  a 
gentle  "  Good  day,  sah."  Most  of  them  wear  caps,  as  in  Barbados, 
though  the  similar  head-gear  of  the  women  in  that  island  is  here  re- 
placed by  bandannas,  usually  red  and  never  topped  off  with  a  hat  as 
in  Haiti.  The  men,  and  many  of  the  women,  smoke  home-made  pipes 
with  long  curved  stems,  buying  their  tobacco  in  long  coils  called  "  jack- 
ass rope,"  which  the  war  forced  to  the  painful  price  of  a  shilling  a 
yard,  though  it  was  once  but  two  pence.  Fully  developed  girls  of 
twelve  eye  the  passer-by  with  crudely  coquettish  airs.  Information 
as  to  distance  is  given  in  "  chains  "  if  at  all,  the  customary  answer 
being  a  non-committal  "  not  too  far,  sah."  The  great  bulk  of  the  coun- 
try population  is  jet  black,  though  in  the  towns  there  are  all  grades  of 
yellow,  from  the  impudent  slight-cast  down  to  mulattoes. 

It  was  in  the  cabin  of  one  of  the  latter  that  I  took  shelter  from  the 
afternoon  shower,  in  a  region  rejoicing  in  the  name  of  Split  Virgin. 
He  was  perhaps  two  thirds  Irish  and  one  third  negro,  but  always  re- 
ferred to  his  black  neighbors  as  "  niggers."  On  the  walls  of  his  un- 
painted  board  parlor  hung  framed  chromo  portraits  of  his  white  an- 
cestors. The  inevitable  topic  of  conversation  of  course  was  the  high 
cost  of  living  —  where  can  one  escape  it  ?  A  "  head  "  of  sugar  had 
advanced  from  a  "gill"  (three  farthings)  to  six  pence;  corn  cost 


more  than  the  chickens  to  which  it  was  fed  increased  in  worth;  wild 
nuts  were  more  expensive  than  the  flesh  they  added  to  his  hogs. 
Calico,  put  in  his  wife,  all  cloth  in  fact,  was  getting  impossible.  Soon 
they  would  have  to  go  naked  —  which  reminded  me  that  one  never 
sees  naked  children  in  Jamaica,  unlike  most  of  the  Caribbean  islands. 
A  man  could  not  even  grow  his  own  food  any  more;  three  fourths  of 
his  yam  holes  were  robbed  at  night  by  the  thieving  "  niggers."  The 
war  and  the  travel  and  experience  that  went  with  it  had  debauched 
even  the  better  class  of  them,  until  they  were  slothful,  proud,  insolent, 
and  wasteful. 

I  stopped  that  night  in  a  mulatto  house  that  took  in  lodgers,  the  only 
point  of  interest  being  the  dug-out  log  that  served  as  bath-tub.  The 
invariable  Jamaican  question  in  making  new  acquaintances  is  "  Please, 
sah,  who  you  is ;  y'u'  name,  please  sah  ?  "  Once  they  know  your  name 
they  seem  to  feel  that  everything  is  all  right.  But  you  must  have  a 
name,  with  a  mister  in  front  of  it.  You  never  say  your  name  is 
Smith.  Your  name  is  Mr.  Smith.  I  tremble  to  think  what  might 
befall  a  stranger  in  rural  Jamaica  who  did  not  happen  to  have  a  name, 
and  a  mister  to  prefix  to  it. 

Over  the  top  of  the  island  range  at  Coleyville,  with  its  wireless  sta- 
tion, I  passed  a  Jamaica  sugarmill  with  a  daily  capacity  of  one  gross 
"  heads."  It  consisted  of  two  upright  wooden  rollers  turned  by  a 
donkey,  an  oval  iron  kettle  set  into  the  top  of  a  mud  furnace,  and  a 
score  of  little  tin  cups  in  which  are  hardened  the  one-pound  dark- 
brown  lumps  of  crude  sugar  that  are  called  "  heads  "  and  which  form 
a  principal  article  of  diet  among  the  country  people.  Long-tailed 
hummingbirds  shimmered  among  the  flowers  at  the  roadside.  Broad 
green  vistas  of  banana  plants,  their  broad  leaves  whipped  to  ribbons 
by  the  trade  wind,  filled  many  a  valley,  sometimes  climbing  part  way 
up  the  surrounding  slopes.  Road  gangs,  usually  of  two  men,  were 
frequent;  negro  women  young  and  old,  sometimes  in  long  groups, 
sometimes  quite  alone,  were  to  be  found  in  every  mile,  sitting  on  stone 
piles  and  wielding  their  hammers.  They  are  paid  a  shilling  a  "  box  " 
for  breaking  up  the  stones,  which  they  must  hunt  for  in  the  fields  and 
carry  to  the  roadside,  earning  an  average,  if  they  told  the  truth,  of  nine 
pence  a  day.  It  was  planting  time  for  ginger,  which  grows  in  little 
patches  on  the  steep  red  hillsides.  The  plant,  which  is  pulled  in  Feb- 
ruary or  March,  somewhat  resembles  a  currant-bush  and  only  the  root 
is  valuable,  the  bushes  being  broken  up  and  used  in  the  following  May 
or  June  as  seed.  With  good  luck  a  Jamaica  peasant  may  get  2000 


420          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

pounds  of  cured  ginger  to  the  acre.  Wages  varied  in  this  region  from 
"  one  and  six  "  to  "  two  and  six,"  one  of  the  workmen  told  me,  adding 
regretfully  "  de  cultivators  in  de  hills  can't  afford  de  dollar"  (four 
shillings)  "  dat  am  payin'  now  de  sugar  estates."  Shingle  and  wood 
houses  were  the  rule  here,  and  they  "were  better  than  the  rural  hovels 
of  Porto  Rico,  perhaps  because  the  material  is  more  plentiful. 

Each  morning  I  met  flocks  of  black  children,  carrying  their  slates 
and  their  few  books  on  their  heads,  hurrying  to  school,  usually  in  the 
church,  from  which  a  chorus  of  hymns  invariably  arose  as  soon  as  the 
pupils  were  gathered.  In  the  early  days  the  government  of  Jamaica 
did  little  toward  educating  the  populace,  but  left  it  to  the  denomina- 
tional schools.  Only  a  few  years  ago  was  the  penny  a  week,  still  re- 
quired of  pupils  in  most  of  the  British  West  Indies,  abolished,  and 
though  there  are  public  schools  now  in  every  parish,  the  Moravians, 
Anglicans,  Catholics,  Presbyterians,  the  Church  of  Scotland,  the  Bap- 
tists, the  Wesleyans,  and  the  Church  of  Jamaica  get  government  sub- 
sidies for  educational  purposes.  England's  school  record  in  Jamaica 
is  as  low  as  our  own  in  Porto  Rico.  Slightly  more  than  half  the 
children  of  school  age  are  enrolled,  and  the  attendance  of  these  is  fit- 
ful. There  is  compulsory  attendance  only  in  Kingston  and  two  or 
three  other  towns.  Only  three  out  of  every  hundred  pupils  reach 
the  sixth  grade,  and  in  all  the  island  fewer  than  three  thousand  con- 
tinue in  school  after  the  age  of  fourteen.  School  inspectors  play  an 
important  part  in  the  social  life,  each  having  about  seventy  schools 
in  his  charge,  which  he  must  visit  twice  a  year.  The  Jamaica  govern- 
ment has  often  been  warned  against  the  danger  of  teaching  her  democ- 
racy to  read  unless  she  also  taught  it  to  think,  but  the  warning  has 
never  been  taken  very  seriously. 

The  country  churches  of  Jamaica  are  small  and  unimposing  com- 
pared with  those  of  Barbados,  though  they  are  more  numerous  and 
often  conspicuous  in  their  prominent  settings  on  the  green  hillsides. 
The  sects  seem  to  run  in  streaks.  In  this  ginger  region  —  most  fit- 
tingly perhaps  —  the  Church  of  Scotland  holds  sway,  the  ministers 
receiving  their  stipends  and  their  instructions  from  the  land  of 
heather.  Farther  on  the  Baptists  prevailed,  and  every  little  negro 
urchin  I  questioned  announced  himself  a  faithful  follower  of  that 
sect.  On  a  high  hilltop  they  had  built  a  stone  church  as  high  as  the 
eaves,  then  suddenly  abandoned  it,  apparently  because  it  had  occurred 
to  them  that  there  was  no  water  available  at  that  height.  The 
Jamaicans  are  much  given  to  religious  expression.  It  is  nothing  rare 


AFRICAN  JAMAICA  421 

to  hear  them  "  callin'  on  de  Lawd  "  as  they  tramp  along  the  roads,  and 
their  antics  sometimes  reach  the  height  of  religious  insanity.  Such 
seemed  to  be  the  case  of  a  ragged  old  woman  I  passed  during  my  sec- 
ond day's  tramp,  or  else  she  was  pretending  the  power  of  prophecy  for 
the  benefit  of  the  score  of  wide-eyed  negroes  squatting  on  the  ground 
about  her  as  she  marched  back  and  forth  preaching  with  all  the  in- 
flections of  a  negro  minister  and  ending  each  exhortation  with  a 
"  Bless  de  Lawd,  Oh,  mah  soul !  "  which  echoed  back  from  the  neigh- 
boring hills.  Tombstones  are  less  numerous  in  Jamaican  churchyards 
than  one  would  expect,  perhaps  because  of  the  custom  of  burying  peo- 
ple on  their  own  property.  One  often  comes  upon  a  little  cluster  of 
graves  in  a  lonely  bit  of  woods,  or  beside  a  country  hut,  some  of  them 
dating  from  the  slave  days.  Most  of  them  are  covered  by  a  mound 
of  stone  and  cement,  without  crosses  or  other  upright  monument, 
some  are  large  vaults,  all  are  well  kept  and  usually  freshly  whitewashed. 
Strangely  enough  the  negroes  do  not  seem  to  be  in  any  way  supersti- 
tious about  them. 

Annotto  and  pimento  are  two  important  products  of  the  Jamaican 
hills  that  are  sure  to  draw  the  pedestrian's  attention.  The  former 
is  a  reddish  berry  in  a  kind  of  chestnut-burr  pod,  which  grows  on  a 
spreading  bush  and,  being  boiled,  gives  an  oily  extract  that  is  used  as 
a  dye.  Pimento  is  what  we  know  as  allspice,  and  is  the  only  Jamaican 
export  indigenous  to  the  island.  The  tree  grows  some  thirty  feet  high 
and  its  greenish-gray  bark  and  glossy  green  leaves  cause  it  to  stand 
out  conspicuously  from  the  surrounding  forest.  When  crushed  in  the 
hand  the  leaves  emit  a  strong  aromatic  odor,  but  they  have  no  commer- 
cial value.  The  berry,  of  the  size  of  a  currant,  grows  in  clusters,  is 
glossy  black  when  ripe  and  very  pleasant  to  the  taste.  But  it  must 
be  gathered  before  that,  and  has  then  a  peppery,  astringent  quality. 
They  are  picked  by  sending  a  small  boy  up  the  tree  to  break  off  the 
ends  of  all  the  branches  he  can  reach  and  throw  them  to  the  ground, 
where  the  berries  are  gathered  by  women  and  children  and  carried 
to  the  "  barbecues,"  where  they  are  dried  like  coffee. 

Irish  potatoes  can  be  grown  in  the  highlands  of  Jamaica;  there  are 
some  nutmegs;  the  oranges  are  green  in  color  and  of  poor  quality; 
there  are  sapotes  (which  are  here  called  naseberries,  a  corruption  of 
the  West  Indian  Spanish  nispero),  grapefruit,  shadducks  (a  pear- 
shaped  grapefruit  with  a  reddish  pulp),  the  chocho,  and  a  dozen  other 
purely  tropical  fruits  and  vegetables.  But  with  the  single  exception 
of  the  pimento  all  these  products  have  been  imported,  though  many  of 


422          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

them  have  fervently  adopted  their  new  home.  In  1793,  for  instance, 
when  a  famine  was  ravaging  the  island,  William  Bligh  brought  the 
breadfruit  tree  from  the  South  Seas,  and  to-day  it  is  as  familiar  a 
sight  as  African  faces. 

A  furzy,  almost  treeless,  red  soil  region  surrounded  me  on  my 
second  afternoon.  I  was  flanking  the  famous  cockpit  country,  made 
up  of  numerous  basins  in  close  proximity  and  densely  wooded  from 
top  to  bottom,  wilder  forms  of  what  are  known  in  Minnesota  as 
"  sink-holes."  In  these  the  Maroons  took  refuge  in  their  wars  with 
the  English.  The  Maroons  (an  abbreviation  of  cimaroon,  said  to 
be  derived  from  the  Spanish  cima,  or  mountain  top)  were  originally 
slaves  of  the  Spanish,  who  took  to  the  cockpit  country  after  England 
captured  Jamaica,  where  they  were  joined  from  time  to  time  by  runa- 
way slaves  of  the  newcomers.  England  won  her  title  to  the  island 
almost  without  a  struggle,  but  it  took  two  regiments  to  keep  the 
Maroons  from  recapturing  it.  For  nearly  two  hundred  years  they 
lived  in  wild  freedom  in  the  mountain  recesses,  frequently  descend- 
ing to  harry  the  lowlands  and  carry  off  the  cattle.  The  government 
at  length  entered  into  a  treaty  with  them,  granting  them  2500  acres  of 
land,  and  getting  in  turn  their  assistance  in  quelling  uprisings  of  the 
slaves  or  repelling  foreign  invasion.  They  were  a  bold,  hardy  lot  of 
men,  holding  the  servile  peasant  population  in  great  contempt,  know- 
ing every  inch  of  the  hills  and  forests,  and  were  great  hunters,  either 
of  human  or  four-footed  game.  In  warfare  they  dressed  themselves 
in  green  leaves  which  caused  them  to  blend  invisibly  into  the  landscape. 
It  has  always  been  the  policy  of  the  Government  to  keep  the  Maroons 
at  odds  with  the  rest  of  the  population,  England's  familiar  old  scheme 
for  dominion,  like  the  accentuation  of  caste  lines  in  India.  To-day, 
though  there  are  several  so-called  Maroon  towns  in  the  cockpit  coun- 
try and  another  in  the  northeastern  parish,  there  are  said  to  be  almost 
no  "  pure  blooded  "  Maroons  left.  They  still  exist  in  name,  however, 
and  have  their  own  chiefs,  churches,  and  schools,  and  once  a  year 
they  are  paid  an  official  visit  by  the  custos  of  the  parish,  when  they 
"  dress  up  in  leaves  and  similar  rubbish  and  go  through  a  lot  of  child- 
ish hocuspocus."  In  theory  at  least  they  are  more  independent  than 
the  other  negroes  —  which  is  strong  language  indeed  —  but  though 
every  little  while  some  black  countryman  bullies  his  neighbors  by 
claiming  to  be  a  Maroon,  there  is  nothing  by  which  to  distinguish  the 


AFRICAN  JAMAICA  423 

present  decendants  of  the  war-like  slaves  from  those  whose  ancestors 
peacefully  awaited  emancipation. 

Wayside  shops  are  somewhat  less  numerous  in  Jamaica  than  in 
Barbados,  and  it  is  significant  of  a  larger  American  influence  here  that 
they  are  called  stores.  The  best  of  them,  virtually  all  the  provision 
shops  in  fact,  are  kept  by  Chinamen,  unknown  in  "  Little  England." 
Even  in  the  most  remote  corners  of  the  mountainous  interior  one 
comes  upon  Celestials  plying  their  chosen  trade,  most  of  them  of  the 
younger  generation,  born  in  Jamaica  and  speaking  the  same  slovenly 
tongue  as  their  negro  clients,  yet  retaining  all  their  native  attributes, 
sphinx-like,  taciturn,  unflaggingly  diligent,  apparently  wholly  devoid 
of  curiosity,  only  rarely  succumbing  to  the  native  influence  to  the  ex- 
tent of  mumbling  an  indifferent  "Where  y'u  go?"  or  "What  y'u 
name?"  In  striking  contrast  to  Barbados,  too,  are  the  stocks  of  im- 
ported canned  and  salt  fish,  even  in  stores  on  the  edge  of  the  sea.  Every 
scattered  collection  of  huts  has  its  post  office,  always  bearing  the  blue 
sign  "  Quinine  for  Sale."  Single  pills  of  the  febrifuge  are  sold  in 
printed  envelopes  at  a  farthing  each,  though  there  are  few  coins  of  that 
size  in  circulation,  and  he  who  buys  a  penny-worth  gets  his  four  pills 
in  as  many  separate  envelopes.  The  favorite  native  occupation  seems 
to  be  the  patching  of  shoes.  It  is  a  rare  mile  that  does  not  have  at 
least  one  "  shoemaker  "  seated  in  the  door  of  his  tiny  shanty  or  single 
room,  striving  to  make  both  ends  meet  with  a  few  scraps  of  leather  and 
a  handful  of  nails.  Almost  the  only  native  manufacture,  however, 
is  the  weaving  of  "  jippi  jappa  "  hats,  a  very  coarse,  poor  imitation  of 
the  Panama,  though  the  country  people  make  all  shapes  and  sizes  of 
baskets. 

The  language  of  Jamaica  is  at  best  curious;  that  spoken  in  the  hills 
seems  almost  a  foreign  dialect,  and  the  stranger  must  listen  attentively 
and  usually  have  phrases  repeated  before  he  understands  them.  He 
is  unlikely  to  catch- more  than  the  general  drift  of  a  conversation  be- 
tween the  natives.  Yet  few  African  words  remain ;  what  seem  such 
to  the  stranger  turn  out  upon  inquiry  to  be  mutilated  forms  of  Eng- 
lish. "  No,  please  "  and  "  Oh,  yes,  please,  sah  "  are  the  habitual  nega- 
tive and  affirmative  of  the  rural  districts  when  addressing  white  per- 
sons. Now  and  then  the  greeting  of  the  older  people  is  "  Good  mawnin', 
dear  massa,"  or  "  I  tell  you  good  evenin',  mistress."  It  is  always  "  I 
could  n't  tell  you,"  never  "  I  don't  know."  A  white  baby  is  a  "  bukra 
pickney  "  to  the  country  people ;  smile  at  any  of  their  childish  antics 


424          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

and  they  are  flattered  into  confiding  to  one  another  "  De  bukra  him 
laugh."  African  languages  consist  largely  of  gesture.  With  the 
learning  of  English  from  the  stolid  Anglo-Saxon  this  has  in 
great  measure  disappeared.  It  is  much- more  prevalent  in  the  country 
than  in  the  towns,  and  much  more  marked  when  they  are  talking 
to  one  another  than  when  addressing  a  white  man.  The  negro- 
English  of  the  masses  is  no  more  intelligible  to  the  newcomer  than 
real  English  is  to  the  rural  population,  and  most  planters  save 
themselves  time  and  trouble  by  addressing  their  laborers  in 
their  own  dialect.  The  Jamaican  negro  is  much  given  to  talking 
things  over  with  himself,  his  brain  evidently  refusing  to  work  silently, 
and  it  is  the  rule  rather  than  the  exception  to  hear  those  one  meets 
along  the  roads  engaged  in  a  soliloquy.  In  slavery  days  queer  terms 
were  used  for  money  and  they  are  still  heard  in  the  rural  districts 
and  in  town  markets.  I  found  a  Chinaman  spending  his  spare  time 
between  customers  in  wrapping  up  tiny  packages  of  sugar  and  asked 
him  if  they  were  a  penny-worth,  which  seemed  small  enough  indeed 
at  present  prices.  No,  they  are  sold  at  a  "  gill,"  or  three  farthings. 
Two  "  gills,"  or  three  "  ha'p'nnies,"  is  a  "  quattie."  A  shilling  used 
to  be  a  "  macaroni,"  three  pence  was  for  some  reason  called  "  fip- 
pence,"  and  to  this  day  one  occasionally  hears  the  equivalent  of  thirty 
West  Indian  cents  referred  to  as  "a  mac  an'  fippence."  The  ejacu- 
latory  "  I  mean  to  say "  is  as  frequent  in  the  speech  of  even  the 
peasants  as  it  is  in  England. 

What  may  be  called  proverbs  for  lack  of  a  more  exact  name  are 
numerous  among  the  masses  of  Jamaica.  Let  me  quote  a  few,  leav- 
ing the  reader  to  catch  what  meaning  he  can  out  of  them : 

"  Better  fe  water  trow  'way  dan  gourd  fe  bruck." 
"  Black  man  tief,  him  tief  half  a  bit ;  bukra  tief ,  him  tief  whole  a 
estate." 

"  Cock  crow  Wrongest  'pon  him  own  dung'll." 

"  Cedar  board  laugh  after  dead  man." 

"  Don'  cry  oveh  milk  wha'  trow  'way  a'ready." 

"  Dog  hab  too  much  owner  him  sleep  widout  supper." 

"  Ebery  dog  tink  himself  lion  in  him  massa  yard." 

"  Ebery  John  Crow  tink  him  pickney  white." 

"  Ebery  man  know  where  him  house  a  leak." 

"  Follow  fashin  mek  monkey  cut  him  tail." 

"  Get  a  quattie  better  dan  a  kick." 


AFRICAN  JAMAICA  425 

"  Lam  te  dance  a  home  befo'  y'u  go  outside." 
"  Man  no  done  grow  mus'n  laugh  afteh  short  man." 
"  Man  get  in  trouble  pickney  breeches  fit  he." 
"  Runnin'  'bout  too  much  de  ruin  ob  woman  an'  fowl." 
"  Same  ting  sweet  mout'  hu't  belly." 
"  Sometime  high  standin'  collar  stan'  top  a  empty  belly." 
"  Too  much  cousin  broke  shop." 

"  When  y'u  hab  bad  husban'  don'  mek  y'u  sweethea't  ca'  y'u  half 
way." 

"  Man  run  too  fast  run  two  time." 

"  Ebery  jackass  tink  him  pickney  a  race  horse." 

Folk  lore  shows  evidence  of  English  and  African  mixture.  Here 
is  a  story  as  it  was  told  by  our  son's  Jamaican  nursemaid,  without  the 
inimitable  pronunciation : 

"  One  day  a  gentleman  and  lady  have  two  girl.  And  they  sent  them 
out  to  look  for  them  granny.  When  them  got  in  the  thick  wood  and 
them  meet  with  a  orangootang.  The  orangootang  axed  them  where 
are  them  going  to.  '  I  am  going  to  look  for  my  granny.'  And  said, 
'  Here  is  my  granny.'  And  them  said,  *  No,  you  is  not  my  granny. 
My  granny  got  a  mark  right  on  her  mout'.'  And  he  went  in  the  thick 
wood  took  a  knife  scrape  off  his  mout'  and  come  out  and  said,  '  Here  is 
your  granny  now.'  And  he  took  dem  and  carry  dem  in  his  house  and 
just  half  cook  de  food  dat  carry  for  dem  granny.  And  when  night 
come  him  eat  off  de  middle  of  de  biggest  one  and  lef  only  de  hand  and 
de  head  and  de  feet.  And  de  little  one  said,  '  Granny,  let  I  go  outside.' 
And  he  said  go  and  de  smallest  one  run  home  and  can't  talk  till  three 
days.  And  de  father  get  twelve  men  and  gone  look  for  de  orangoo- 
tang. And  when  he  going  six  mont'  he  catch  de  orangootang  and  put 
him  into  de  cage  and  when  six  mont'  come  he  throw  kerosene  oil  on 
him  and  light  him  a  fire." 

Tenses  mean  nothing  to  the  uneducated  Jamaican,  and  the  subjective 
and  objective  pronouns  are  more  likely  to  be  reversed  than  not.  Be- 
tween the  plural  and  singular  of  either  verb  or  noun  he  shows  an  en- 
gaging impartiality,  while  the  double  negative  is  to  him  a  form  of  em- 
phasis. 

Beyond  Ulster  Spring,  a  scattered  town  in  a  kind  of  cockpit  so 
full  of  mist  in  the  early  morning  as  to  seem  a  lake,  my  road  dropped 
rapidly  down  a  beautiful  narrow  valley,  the  high,  ragged  hills  on  both 
sides  tree-clothed  in  all  but  the  barest  white  sheer  spots.  Little  wooden 


426          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

houses  were  pitched  on  wooded  knolls  and  jutting  places  that  seemed 
almost  inaccessible.  Here  and  there  the  ancient  stone  road-parapet 
had  fallen  away,  giving  splendid  opportunities  for  far  swifter  descent 
on  a  dark  night.  Through  the  canyon  echoed  the  voice  of  a  negro 
woman,  singing  hymns  as  she  walked."  Birds  sang  continually;  from 
the  inaccessible  little  houses  came  the  occasional  bleating  of  goats. 
Dry  River  Lake,  evidently  in  the  bottom  of  a  prehistoric  crater,  shim- 
mered far  below  me,  surrounded  by  the  densest  vegetation,  and  utter 
silence.  Jamaica  has  many  rivers  that  disappear  and  reappear  at  ran- 
dom throughout  their  course.  Negro  men  on  their  way  to  work  on  the 
jungled  hillsides  carried  their  machetes  in  one  hand  and  a  smouldering 
block  of  wood  in  the  other,  to  smoke  out  the  mosquitos.  Some  bore 
in  addition  a  blackened  five-gallon  oil  tin  of  water  on  their  heads. 
The  day  did  not  grow  unpleasantly  warm  until  I  had  passed  Sawyer's 
Market  and  entered  a  long  fertile  plain,  completely  uncultivated,  al- 
most uninhabited,  studded  with  great  clumps  of  bamboo.  Dolphin  Head, 
the  highest  peak  in  western  Jamaica,  peered  above  the  landscape  to  the 
left.  Then  bit  by  bit  the  negroes  grew  numerous  and  impudent  again, 
and  I  knew  that  the  sugar-bearing  coastlands  were  at  hand. 

Negroes  so  black  and  ox-like  that  they  seemed  scarcely  human 
plodded  past,  never  giving  greeting  as  in  the  hills,  though  sometimes 
shouting  an  obscene  jest.  Children  ran  at  sight  of  me,  as  those  of 
Italy,  for  instance,  do  at  sight  of  a  negro.  Ragged  old  women  were 
hoeing  cane  in  the  fields.  They  earned  five  shillings  a  week ;  the  strong- 
est men  three  a  day,  at  "task-work,"  laboring  from  Monday  to  Fri- 
day. Here  and  there  was  an  old-fashioned  rum-mill,  recognisable  by 
its  stench  as  well  as  by  its  old  brick  chimney  and  the  heaps  of  rotting 
cane-pulp  about  it.  The  cane-carts  were  hauled  by  three  or  four  pairs 
of  oxen,  a  dozen  men  shrieking  about  them  to  urge  them  up  the  slopes 
of  the  soft  fields.  Like  most  of  those  in  Jamaica  they  were  crosses 
between  English  and  East  Indian  cattle,  particularly  the  Mysore  breed. 
Though  inferior  from  the  butcher's  point  of  view,  these  cross-breeds 
are  noted  for  their  quickness  and  endurance  under  the  yoke,  and  they 
have  a  black,  sun-resistant  skin  even  when  outwardly  light-colored 
or  white.  Once  I  passed  a  ruined  old  windmill  tower,  capped  with 
ivy,  but  they  are  rare  in  Jamaica.  The  thick,  hot  air  hung  motionless 
after  the  afternoon  shower.  Rocky,  bush-grown  hills  intruded  again 
where  one  expected  flat,  fertile  coastlands,  sugar-cane  died  out  once 
more,  and  with  it  the  negroes. 

Then  suddenly  the  Caribbean  appeared  through  a  break  in  the  hills, 


AFRICAN  JAMAICA  427 

so  high  and  dark-blue  that  it  seemed  at  first  a  new  mountain  range, 
and  on  the  edge  of  it  I  caught  a  glimpse  of  Falmouth,  not  to  be  seen 
again  until  I  was  treading  its  very  streets.  Many  old  stone  ruins, 
especially  the  foundations  and  steps  of  what  had  evidently  been  big 
plantation  houses,  peered  forth  from  the  bush.  There  were  other  signs 
that  large  estates  had  once  flourished  where  all  was  not  "  ruinate." 
Dreary,  silent,  dismal,  swarming  with  mosquitoes,  the  last  few  miles 
led  through  an  unbroken  mangrove  swamp.  Myriads  of  landcrabs 
of  all  sizes  and  colors,  some  huge  as  small  turtles,  others  no  larger 
than  flies,  with  green,  red,  cream-colored,  and  multi-colored  backs, 
scuttled  into  their  holes  as  I  passed.  Falmouth  had  little  to  recom- 
mend it,  either  as  a  place  of  abode  or  of  sojourn.  Sweltering  even  at 
midnight,  its  streets  impudent  with  lounging  negroes,  it  recalled  by 
contrast  the  cool  and  simple  little  villages  in  the  hills.  I  found  lodg- 
ing in  a  room  strewn  with  the  greasy  paraphernalia  of  a  negro  dentist 
and  which  had  not  known  the  luxury  of  a  broom  or  a  dust-cloth  in 
weeks,  though  the  mulatto  house-owner  complained  that  she  "  can't  get 
no  work  to  do."  A  Salvation  Army  street  meeting  whicn  erupted  a 
few  doors  away  was  the  nearest  replica  of  a  Central  African  tomtom 
dance,  with  clothes  on  and  smeared  with  a  thin  English  veneer,  that 
it  has  ever  been  my  luck  to  behold  in  an  ostensibly  civilized  coun- 
try. 

I  had  not  intended  to  walk  the  twenty-two  miles  along  the  coast 
from  Falmouth  to  Montego  Bay,  but  as  the  mail  bus  left  at  three  in 
the  morning  and  private  automobiles  demanded  three  shillings  a  mile, 
I  changed  my  plans.  Groups  of  ragged  negro  women  came  down  out 
of  the  hills  singing,  their  dinner  in  a  rag  or  a  pail  on  their  heads,  and 
fell  to  work  in  newly  cleared  cane-fields.  Pedestrians  were  constantly 
beating  off  the  mosquitoes  with  leafy  branches.  Once  there  had  been 
big  stone  houses  here  also,  now  there  were  only  miserable  negro  shacks 
scattered  among  the*  cocoanut  groves.  The  sea  breeze  was  nearly  al- 
ways cut  off  by  these  or  mangrove  jungles.  The  only  noise  except 
occasional  shrieking  negroes  was  the  cry  of  mourning  doves  and  the 
equally  mournful  "  sough  "  of  the  slow  breakers  on  the  reefs  far  out 
from  shore.  Fishermen  were  rare.  Now  and  then  the  swamps  dis- 
appeared and  the  road  plodded  endlessly  onward  at  the  very  edge  of 
the  unruffled  inner  lagoons.  I  passed  only  one  shop  on  the  journey, 
kept  of  course  by  a  Jamaica-born  Chinaman.  Drinking  water  was  not 
to  be  had ;  the  June  sun  beat  down  like  a  red-hot  ingot ;  the  incredibly 
stupid  watchmen,  most  of  whom  were  females,  could  not  be  induced 


428          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

to  sell  a  single  one  of  the  green  cocanuts  under  their  charge.  I  adopted 
the  Jamaican  custom  of  praedial  larceny  and,  picking  a  plump  green 
nut  now  and  then  from  the  low  young  trees,  jabbed  a  hole  in  it  on  a 
sharp  f  encepost  and  quenched  a  raging  thirst  that  returned  again  within 
a  half  mile.  Noisome  carrion  crows,  with  red  heads  instead  of  black, 
unlike  those  of  Trinidad,  and  called  "  johncrow  "  by  the  natives,  moved 
lazily  aside  as  I  advanced. 

Midway  between  the  two  towns  I  passed  a  three-story  mansion  set 
somewhat  back  from  the  sea  on  what  was  once  one  of  the  finest  estates 
in  Jamaica.  To-day  it  is  closed  and  abandoned,  yet  needs  no  watchman, 
for  the  negroes  are  convinced  that  it  is  haunted.  Rose  Hall  it  is  called, 
and  its  story  has  long  been  familiar  throughout  Jamaica.  Here,  runs 
the  yarn,  lived  a  pretty  Mrs.  Palmer,  who  was  so  eccentric  that  she 
caused  the  house  to  be  built  according  to  the  divisions  of  time, —  365 
windows,  52  doors,  24  rooms,  12  of  this,  7  of  that,  and  so  on.  But 
eccentricity  seems  to  have  been  the  least  of  her  faults,  for  in  this  very 
house,  the  tale  goes  on,  she  killed  four  husbands  and  was  on  the  point 
of  sending  the  fifth  to  join  them  when  he  turned  the  tables. 

At  length  the  featureless  road  swung  inland  along  the  edge  of  an 
immense  bay,  across  which  stood  forth  the  wooded  hills  of  Hanover 
parish.  Its  waters  were  glass-smooth,  but  the  seawall  smashed  for  long 
distances  recalled  that  the  Caribbean  does  not  always  lie  so  peaceful  and 
enticing.  Cottages  with  bathing-suits  hung  over  the  veranda  rails 
began  to  appear,  then  white  men,  of  whom  I  had  seen  but  one  in  three 
days,  and  he  with  a  negro  wife.  Montego  Bay  aspires  to  be  a  tourists' 
winter  paradise,  but  unfortunately  the  town  lies  around  behind  a  hill 
that  cuts  off  that  life-saving  trade  wind  which  Jamaicans  call  "  the  doc- 
tor "  and  in  its  place  comes  only  the  fitful  land  breeze  known  as  "  the 
undertaker."  Then,  too,  it  is  short  of  water.  Most  of  Jamaica  is,  for 
unlike  Barbados,  which  has  not  a  tithe  as  many  sources  of  supply,  the 
island  depends  chiefly  on  what  it  can  catch  from  the  rains.  The 
result  is  frequently  to  deprive  the  perspiring  visitor  of  his  bath.  Tour- 
ist literature  would  have  us  believe  that  "  the  band  of  the  Montego  Bay 
Citizens'  Association  performs  in  the  Parade  "  —  most  Jamaican  towns 
have  a  dusty  central  square  known  by  that  name  —  "  in  the  evenings, 
and  greatly  adds  to  the  pleasure  of  the  visitor."  "  Perform  "  it  does 
indeed,  and  none  can  deny  that  it  adds  to  the  risibility  of  nations ;  but 
let  no  music  lover  be  misled  by  this  particular  abuse  of  the  maltreated 
word  "  pleasure." 


AFRICAN  JAMAICA  429 

Of  the  many  other  beauties  of  Jamaica  space  precludes  anything 
more  than  brief  mention.  There  are  the  cane-fields  of  Westmoreland 
parish,  for  instance,  the  tobacco  growing  hills  of  St.  Elizabeth,  the 
journey  up  the  gorge  to  Bog  Walk,  St.  Ann's  parish  with  its  newly 
born  lake  of  Moneague,  its  many  pimento  trees,  its  beguiling  Fern 
Gully,  where  are  to  be  found  innumerable  species  of  the  plants  that  give 
the  ravine  its  name,  from  the  maidenhair  to  the  treefern,  known  locally 
as  the  "  rattadrum."  Here,  too,  are  Roaring  River  Falls  and  the  scene 
of  Columbus'  longest  residence  in  the  West  Indies,  for  he  lay  a  twelve- 
month with  his  worm-eaten  vessels  in  what  is  now  called  Dry  Harbor. 

But  it  would  never  do  to  leave  Jamaica  without  getting  a  "  close-up  " 
of  her  banana  industry,  and  to  do  this  to  best  advantage  one  should 
go  to  Port  Antonio.  Above  Bog  Walk  on  the  way  there  is  Natural 
Bridge,  where  the  river  cuts  a  great  archway  through  the  rocky  hills, 
the  highway  crossing  it  far  above,  recalling  famous  Rumichaca  on  the 
boundary  of  Colombia  and  Ecuador,  to  say  nothing  of  one  of  our  own 
scenic  beauties.  Here  is  a  splendid  place  to  end  a  Sunday  stroll,  for 
there  is  a  magnificent  bath  awaiting  one  amid  the  boulders  over  which 
the  river  pours  with  a  constant  subway  roar  and,  if  one  can  elude  the 
gaping  negroes  who  are  otherwise  sure  to  follow,  no%other  observers 
than  the  hundreds  of  little  swallows  always  flitting  in  and  out  of  their 
nests  in  the  rock  cliffs.  Then  when  the  sun  has  lost  its  youthful  ardor 
one  may  climb  again  to  the  village  and  catch  the  afternoon  train  over 
the  mountains  to  the  north  coast.  The  region  about  Highgate  almost 
rivals  the  beauty  of  Porto  Rico.  Cacao,  cocoanuts,  clumps  of  bamboo, 
the  spreading  breadfruit-trees,  whole  valleys  full  of  bananas,  some  of 
which  climb  far  up  the  surrounding  slopes,  decorate  the  rugged  land- 
scape. One  looks  almost  in  vain,  however,  as  in  all  Jamaica,  for  the 
queen  of  tropical  vegetation,  the  royal  —  or,  as  the  English  unimagina- 
tively call  it,  the  cabbage-palm.  Then  the  train  descends  quickly 
through  tunnels  and  across  lofty  viaducts  to  Anotta  Bay,  a  large  col- 
lection of  wooden  shanties  noted  for  its  mosquitoes,  but  with  the  blue 
Caribbean  stretching  away  beyond  it  to  the  horizon. 

Along  the  edge  of  this  the  railway  squirms  through  a  wide  fringe 
of  cocoanuts  for  two  hours  more.  The  frequent  stations  swarm  with 
female  negro  food-venders.  Hindus  are  somewhat  more  numerous 
and  though  even  the  women  nearly  all  wear  Jamaican  dress  their  Aryan 
features  and  unobtrusive  manner  distinguish  them  as  quickly  as  their 
nose-rings  and  massive  necklaces  from  the  African  bulk  of  the  popula- 


430          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

tion.  At  length  comes  Port  Antonio,  with  its  twin  harbors,  embowered 
in  hills  half  wooded  with  cocoanuts,  an  unexpectedly  delightful  place 
to  the  traveler  who  has  known  other  Jamaican  coast  towns.  Here  the 
trade  wind,  unknown  in  Kingston,  blows  unceasingly,  and  that  alone 
doubles  the  worth  of  any  West  Indian  spot.  Irregular  and  more  com- 
pact than  the  two  rivals  it  has  probably  outdistanced  since  the  last 
census,  Port  Antonio  has  a  more  thriving,  sanitary,  comfort-loving  air, 
thanks  perhaps  to  the  American  influence  of  its  banana  trade. 

Jamaica  claims  advantages  over  all  the  rest  of  the  world  for  banana 
cultivation.  The  vast  tracts  of  virgin  land  in  Central  America  and 
Colombia  are  two  days  farther  from  the  principal  market.  Costa  Rica 
is  hampered  by  frequent  droughts  at  the  very  season  when  the  fruit 
most  needs  rain ;  for  the  great  game  in  banana  growing  is  to  have  them 
ready  to  cut  at  the  time  when  other  fruit  is  scarce  in  the  north.  Cuba 
is  a  trifle  too  near  the  north  pole,  it  is  wedded  to  its  sugar  industry, 
and  its  labor  is  several  times  more  expensive  than  that  of  Jamaica. 
Bananas  demand  heat,  moisture,  and  a  good  fat  soil,  and  all  these  may 
be  had  in  the  largest  of  the  British  West  Indies,  particularly  in  the 
northeastern  parish  of  Portland,  for  the  Blue  Mountains  which  deny 
Kingston  and  -its  vicinity  the  rainfall  it  needs  precipitate  most  of  it 
here.  What  was  then  a  little  known  fruit  in  American  markets  was 
first  planted  on  a  large  scale  in  this  very  parish  a  half  century  ago. 
By  1894  it  had  become  the  most  important  export  of  the  island,  out- 
distancing both  products  of  the  sugarcane,  and  twenty  years  later  it 
constituted  sixty  per  cent,  of  Jamaica's  contribution  to  the  world's 
larder.  The  war,  abetted  by  three  consecutive  hurricanes,  the  banana's 
greatest  enemy,  reversed  this  condition,  but  the  sugar-men  themselves 
do  not  long  hope  to  hold  their  new  lead. 

I  chanced  to  reach  Port  Antonio  at  the  very  height  of  a  banana  war. 
The  two  powerful  older  companies  had  determined  to  annihilate  a  new 
one  by  that  simple  little  method  of  starving  it  to  death.  Before  the 
World  War  a  bunch  of  bananas  seldom  sold  for  more  than  two  shillings 
and  six  pence  in  Jamaica,  but  the  competition  of  the  newcomers  had 
gradually  forced  this  up  to  four  shillings.  In  the  single  day  of  my 
visit  it  advanced  hourly  by  leaps  and  bounds,  —  five  shillings,  five 
shillings  and  three  pence  commission,  six  shillings,  six  and  six,  seven 
shillings,  with  a  six  pence  commission  if  need  be,  and  free  transporta- 
tion to  the  port  —  as  often  as  the  interlopers  covered  their  bids  the  im- 
perturbable managers  of  the  powerful  companies  sent  out  new  induce- 
ments over  their  private  telephone  system,  until  the  joyful  planters  of 


AFRICAN  JAMAICA  431 

some  sections  were  pocketing  eleven  shillings  for  every  bunch  of  bananas 
they  could  lay  down  at  the  roadside  bordering  their  fields.  The  fruit 
poured  into  Port  Antonio  in  an  endless  stream,  by  motor-truck,  by 
wagon,  pack-donkey,  on  the  heads  of  men  and  women,  for  even  the 
negroes  who  had  but  a  single  bunch  worth  cutting  hastened  to  part 
with  it  at  this  unprecedented  price. 

But  let  us  watch  the  process  from  the  ground  up,  for  the  benefit  of 
those  who  know  the  banana  only  as  it  appears  on  the  fruit-seller's  stand. 
We  have  only  to  catch  one  of  the  mammoth  trucks  thundering  away 
empty  into  the  hills  in  the  direction  of  Mooretown,  once  a  settlement  of 
Maroons.  Every  little  while  along  the  way,  jolly,  muscular  negro 
laborers  swing  up  over  the  tail-board  until  by  the  time  we  have  reached 
Golden  Vale,  said  to  be  the  oldest  export  banana  farm  in  the  world, 
there  are  enough  of  them  to  load  the  truck  in  a  bare  twenty  minutes. 
It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  say,  I  suppose,  that  bananas  grow  on  a 
species  of  mammoth  weed  rather  than  a  tree,  that  each  produces  a 
single  bunch,  that  this  grows  "  upside  down  "  from  our  f ruitstand  point 
of  view,  and  that  they  must  be  cut  before  they  are  ripe.  Golden  Vale 
looks  like  an  immense  green  lake  surrounded  by  mountains,  up  the 
lower  slopes  of  which  the  bananas  climb  for  a  considerable  distance. 
Close  overhead  sits  Blue  Mountain  Peak,  coifFed  in  blue-black  clouds. 
Hindu  men,  whom  the  overseers  invariably  address  as  "  Babu,"  do  most 
of  the  cutting,  while  the  more  powerful  but  less  careful  negroes  do  the 
handling.  The  "  Babus  "  wander  in  and  out  through  the  green  arch- 
ways, giving  a  glance  at  each  hanging  bunch.  When  they  see  one  which 
has  reached  the  proper  stage  of  development,  they  grasp  it  by  the  pro- 
truding stem,  to  which  the  big  blue  flower  usually  still  clings,  and  pull 
down  "  tree  "  and  all  with  a  savage  jerk.  A  machete,  called  a  cutlass 
in  Jamaica,  flashes,  a  negro  catches  the  bunch  as  it  falls,  another  slash 
severs  the  flower-bearing  stem  a  few  inches  from  the  top-most  bananas, 
a  third  leaves  the  "  tree  "  a  mere  stump,  shoulder-high,  and  the  cutters 
continue  their  search.  Days  later,  when  its  sap  has  run  back  into  the 
roots,  the  stump  is  cut  off  at  the  ground  and  a  new  shoot  springs  up  to 
produce  next  year's  bunch.  The  bunches  that  have  been  gathered 
are  wrapped  in  dry  brown  banana  leaves,  and  carried  to  the  roadside, 
along  which  other  brown  heaps  lie  everywhere  as  we  hurry  down  to  the 
port,  the  loaders  dropping  off  one  by  one  at  their  shanties  or  the  fre- 
quent rum-shops  along  the  way.  Quick  handling  is  an  absolute 
requisite  in  the  banana  business,  and  many  a  planter  has  come  to  grief 
by  not  giving  sufficient  attention  to  the  question  of  transportation. 


432  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

Arrived  at  the  wharves  the  truck  is  as  quickly  unloaded,  and  an  end- 
less chain  of  negroes,  nearly  all  women,  take  up  the  task  of  distribution, 
according  to  size  and  destination.  For  there  are  "  English "  and 
"  American  "  bananas,  grown  in  the  same  field  and  differing  not  at  all 
in  species  but  by  about  ten  days  in  their  cutting  time,  so  that  the  former 
are  lean  and  the  latter  fat.  Moreover,  a  bunch  is  not  by  any  means 
always  a  bunch  in  the  language  of  the  banana  companies.  In  the  first 
place  they  are  more  often  called  "  stems,"  and  a  "  stem  "  must  have  at 
least  nh.e  "  hands  "  of  fruit  (the  latter  average  a  dozen  bananas  each) 
if  it  is  to  be  paid  for  as  a  full  bunch.  If  it  has  more  than  that  well  and 
good;  that  is  the  company's  gain  and  no  one's  loss.  But  if  there  are 
but  eight  "  hands  "  it  is  rated  two  thirds  of  a  "  stem,"  if  seven,  one  half, 
if  six,  one  fourth,  if  less  than  that  the  planter  might  better  have  fed  it 
to  his  hogs  or  his  laborers,  for  the  buyers  will  have  none  of  it.  This 
rating  is  less  unjust  than  it  appears,  for  the  fewer  the  "  hands  "  the 
smaller  and  fewer  are  the  bananas. 

The  slouching  negroes  who  make  up  the  endless  chain,  are  not  re- 
quired to  tax  their  minds  with  these  problems  of  size  and  nationality. 
They  use  their  heads,  to  be  sure,  but  only  in  the  manner  that  seems 
best  fitted  to  the  race  —  as  common  carriers.  Two  men  snatch  up  the 
bunches  one  by  one,  casting  aside  the  brown  leaf  wrappers,  and  lay  each 
one  flat  on  a  passing  head,  the  owner  of  which  shuffles  away  as  if  it 
were  burdened  with  nothing  but  a  hat  instead  of  an  average  weight  of 
eighty  pounds.  At  the  edge  of  the  shed  in  which  the  bananas  are  piled 
to  await  prompt  shipment  stands  a  high  desk  with  three  men,  usually 
quadroons  or  lighter,  standing  about  it.  The  oldest,  most  intelligent, 
and  most  experienced  looking  of  these  casts  what  seems  to  be  a  careless 
glance  at  each  "  stem  "  and  mumbles  in  a  weary  monotone,  "  English, 
eight,"  "  American,  nine,"  "  English,  seven,"  or  some  other  of  the 
combinations;  his  most  youthful  companion  makes  a  pencil  mark  on 
the  ledger  before  him,  the  least  lively  looking  of  the  trio  hands  a  metal 
or  cardboard  disk  to  the  carrier,  who  drops  it  into  a  pocket  and  slouches 
on  to  the  particular  pile  to  which  her  burden  has  been  assigned.  On 
the  way  she  passes  a  negro  armed  with  a  cutlass,  who  lops  off  the 
protruding  ends  of  the  stem  in  front  of  her  nose  and  behind  her  ears 
as  she  walks  without  so  much  as  arousing  a  flicker  of  her  drowsy, 
black  eyelids. 

When  the  ship  comes  in,  which  must  be  that  night  or  at  latest  next 
day,  a  similar  endless  chain  of  negroes,  more  nearly  male  in  sex, 
carry  the  bananas  on  board,  a  tally-clerk  ringing  the  bell  of  an  auto- 


AFRICAN  JAMAICA  433 

matic  counter  in  his  hand  as  each  "  stem  "  passes.  In  some  ports  a 
wide  leather  belt  takes  the  place  of  this  human  chain.  But  a  large 
gang  is  required  for  all  that,  and  when  the  last  pile  has  disappeared 
from  the  wharf  the  carriers  strew  themselves  about  it  and  sleep  soundly 
on  the  hard  planks  until  the  next  load  arrives.  Its  quota  supplied,  the 
steamer's  hatches  are  quickly  battened  down,  icy  air  is  turned  in  upon 
the  perishable  cargo,  and  the  vessel  rushes  full  speed  ahead  for  the 
United  States  or  England,  where  the  fruit  begins  to  rattle  away  in 
other  trucks  before  the  mere  human  passengers  have  leave  to  descend 
the  gangway.  Not  until  it  has  reached  the  retailer  does  it  take  on  that 
golden  yellow  hue  that  is  familiar  to  the  ultimate  consumer. 

I  dropped  off  at  Buff  Bay  station  on  the  return  journey  for  a  jaunt 
over  the  Blue  Mountain  range.  The  "  finger-boards  "  announced  the 
distance  to  Kingston  as  forty-three  miles,  but  there  are  many  short- 
cuts and  an  average  pedestrian  can  make  the  journey  in  a  single  day.  It 
is  a  pleasant  walk  despite  the  fact  that  the  first  sixteen  miles  impose 
a  climb  of  4080  feet  to  Hardware  Gap.  For  the  foothills  begin  at 
once,  and  the  road,  narrow  and  grass-grown  from  disuse  except  near 
the  coast,  climbs  in  almost  constant  shade  along  the  bank  of  Buff  Bay 
river,  and  the  trade  wind  sweeps  incessantly  up  the  valley.  Jamaica 
is  noted  for  its  birds,  of  which  there  are  said  to  be  more  than  forty 
varieties  peculiar  to  the  island,  and  the  majority  of  them  seem  to  make 
this  region  their  chief  rendezvous.  Perpendicular  banana  fields  cover 
the  hillsides  here  and  there  as  high  as  they  can  endure  the  altitude. 
Masses  of  bamboos  lend  a  needed  touch  of  daintiness  to  the  dense 
greenery,  as  a  red-brown  tree  now  and  then  speckling  the  steep  slopes 
adds  contrast  to  what  would  be  an  almost  monotonous  color.  Then 
there  are  the  akee-trees,  numerous  throughout  Jamaica,  with  their 
bright  red,  pear-shaped  fruit,  a  favorite  food  among  the  negroes,  thougn 
it  is  deadly  poison  except  at  certain  stages  of  its  growth,  and  even 
then  is  reputed  the  cause  of  the  vomiting  sickness  that  is  prevalent 
among  the  masses. 

Higher  up  every  turn  of  the  road  brings  to  view  a  new  waterfall, 
standing  out  against  the  greenery  in  flashing  whiteness.  No  wonder 
the  aborigines  called  the  island  Xamayca,  the  land  of  springs  and  water ; 
and  ho\v  one  regrets  that  those  same  red  men  do  not  inhabit  it  still, 
if  only  to  give  relief  from  the  monotony  of  black,  brutal  faces  that  in 
time  grow  almost  intolerable  to  the  traveler  in  the  West  Indies,  until 
there  come  moments  when  he  would  give  all  he  possesses  to  see  these 


434          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

gems  of  the  Caribbean  as  they  were  before  they  became  mere  hives 
of  African  slovenliness.  But  the  only  Arawaks  left  in  the  Jamaica  of 
to-day  are  those  which  uphold  the  arms  of  the  colony  on  its  shield. 
Here  indeed  the  ancient  saying  that  "-every  prospect  pleases  and  only 
man  is  vile  "  reaches  its  full  meaning. 

I  grew  weary  at  length  of  the  incessant  negro  impudence  along  the 
way,  which  ranged  from  foul-mouthed  shouts  to  more  or  less  innocent 
demands  of  "  Heh,  bukra,  what  you  sell  ?  "  It  is  a  ridiculous  failing, 
no  doubt,  but  I  detest  being  taken  for  a  peddler.  I  took  to  shouting 
back,  "  I  am  selling  something  to  make  niggers  white.  Want  some  ?  " 
But,  alas,  sarcasm  seldom  penetrates  the  African  skull.  Far  from  re- 
senting my  rudeness,  the  simple-minded  souls  greeted  it  with  roars  of 
laughter  or  took  it  seriously,  more  often  the  latter.  Dozens  called 
after  me  to  know  the  price  of  this  desirable  remedy ;  several  followed 
me  up  the  road  offering  to  purchase ;  one  old  woman  pursued  me  for 
nearly  half  a  mile ;  one  group  sent  a  boy  running  after  me,  clamoring 
to  know  the  cost  of  my  wares.  "  A  thousand  pounds,"  I  called  back 
over  my  shoulder,  which  being  duly  reported  in  all  solemnity  to  the 
group,  brought  forth  a.  chorus  of  giggles  and  a  regretful-toned,  "  Ah, 
him  humbug  we !  " 

The  last  two  hours,  from  Jiggerfoot  Market  to  the  summit,  was  a 
laborious  climb,  but  unlike  many  such  it  was  lightened  by  frequent 
streams  of  clear,  cold  water.  Then  all  at  once  I  found  myself  at  the 
gap,  or  abra,  as  the  Spaniards  would  call  it,  and  upon  me  burst  a  view 
worth  many  times  the  exertion.  All  the  Liguanea  plain  from  St. 
Thomas  parish  to  Spanish  Town  and  beyond,  far  beyond,  into  the  far- 
thermost hills  of  St.  Catherine's  lay  spread  out  like  a  colored  map 
on  a  draughtsman's  table,  Kingston  in  full  sight  from  the  scattered  rocks 
far  outside  its  harbor,  with  the  sea  breaking  white  upon  them,  to  its  last 
suburbs  among  the  foothills,  the  sand  reef  called  the  Palisadoes  curving 
like  a  fishhook  about  the  harbor,  the  remnants  of  what  once  boasted 
itself  the  most  wicked  town  on  earth  at  its  point,  the  water  about  it 
so  clear  that  one  might  easily  have  fancied  he  saw  the  sunken  city  of 
the  buccaneers.  There  is  spring  water  at  the  very  edge  of  the  gap 
and  if  one  has  thought  to  bring  a  pocket  lunch  there  is  nothing  to  hinder 
a  long  contemplation  of  this  marvelous  panorama,  except  the  gradually 
penetrating  cold  of  the  mountains,  which  seems  indeed  an  anachronism 
within  plain  sight  of  sweltering  Kingston. 

This  sent  me  striding  downward  again  sooner  than  I  had  expected. 
A  hill  covered  with  an  abandoned  cluster  of  big  barracks  soon  cut  off 


AFRICAN  JAMAICA  435 

Kingston  and  most  of  the  plain,  and  left  the  eyes  to  contemplate  a 
nearer  scene.  Ahead,  the  road,  leisurely  and  still  grassy,  had  clawed 
itself  a  foothold  in  the  rocky  hillside,  sheer  and  wooded  with  scrub 
growth  everywhere  except  where  landslides  had  scratched  a  white 
line  down  its  face.  Birds  sang  lustily,  as  if  tuning  up  their  voices  for  a 
later  public  appearance;  human  kind  was  pleasantly  conspicuous  by 
its  absence.  Beyond,  on  the  steep  flank  of  Catherine's  Peak,  the  soldier 
town  of  Newcastle,  where  British  "Tommies"  live  in  an  agreeable 
climate  and  still  keep  an  eye  on  Kingston,  went  down  like  a  giant's 
stairway  into  the  gorge,  an  immense  gorge  always  at  my  very  feet,  with 
little  strings  of  roads  winding  in  and  out  along  its  bottom  as  if  in  vain 
quest  of  an  exit.  And  though  the  plain  below  had  been  faintly  hazy 
and  there  were  banks  of  clouds  in  the  sky  high  above,  the  twin  peaks  of 
Blue  Mountain  range,  7360  higher  than  the  sea,  stood  out  as  plainly  as 
though  one  might  have  thrown  a  stone  over  them. 

Five  miles  constantly  downward  by  a  mountain  trail,  though  it  is 
twice  that  by  the  highway,  brings  one  from  Newcastle  to  Gordontown, 
a  somnolent  hamlet  closely  shut  in  by  high  hills  and  noisy  with  the  little 
river  which  furnishes  Kingston  its  water.  Down  the  bank  of  this 
I  hurried  on  to  the  plain  of  Liguanea,  where  rocking  street-cars  carry 
one  quickly  into  the  insolent  capital,  for  the  mangoes  were  already 
ripening  and  it  was  high  time  we  sailed  away  from  the  island  Columbus 
called  Santa  Gloria. 


THE  FRENCH  WEST  INDIES 
AND  THE  OTHERS 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

GUADELOUPE   AND  DEPENDENCIES 

THERE  is  a  suggestion  of  the  pathetic  in  the  name  by  which 
the  French  call  their  possessions  in  the  New  World  — 
"  L'Amerique  Franchise."  It  recalls  the  days  when  the  terri- 
tory they  held  on  the  western  hemisphere  was  really  worth  that  title, 
when  Canada  and  Louisiana  promised  to  grow  into  a  great  French 
empire  in  the  west,  and  nothing  suggested  that  a  brief  century  would 
see  their  holdings  reduced  to  a  few  fragments  wedged  into  the  string 
of  British  islands  that  form  the  eastern  boundary  of  the  Caribbean. 
The  "  French  America  "of  to-day,  except  for  Cayenne,  a  mere  penal 
colony  backed  by  a  tiny  slice  of  unexplored  South  American  wilderness, 
consists  of  the  minor  islands  of  Guadeloupe  and  Martinique,  and  half 
a  dozen  islets  dependent  on  the  former.  It  is  far  better  entitled  to  the 
more  modest  official  name  of  "  French  Antilles." 

Guadeloupe  —  if  I  may  be  allowed  an  unpleasant  comparison  —  is 
shaped  like  a  pair  of  lungs,  the  left  one  flat  and  low,  the  other  ex- 
panded into  splendid  mountain  heights.  They  are  really  two  islands 
separated  by  the  short  Salt  River,  across  which  is  flung  a  single  wooden 
bridge,  and  by  some  geographical  oversight,  their  names  have  been 
twisted.  The  lowland  to  the  east  masquerades  under  the  false  title  of 
Grande  Terre,  while  the  truly  great  land  of  magnificent  heights  and 
mighty  ravines  to  the  south  and  west  is  miscalled  Basse  Terre.  The 
misnomers  suggest  that  they  were  named  by  some  bureaucrat  seated 
before  a  map,  rather  than  by  explorers  on  the  spot. 

Columbus  landed  on  what  the  natives  called  Turukera  or  Karnkera 
on  his  second  voyage  —  a  busy  time,  indeed,  he  must  have  had  keeping 
his  log  on  that  journey  —  and  recalled  the  promise  he  had  made  to 
the  monks  of  Nuestra  Senora  de  Guadeloupe  in  Estremadura  to  name 
an  island  in  honor  of  their  patron  Lady.  He  found  human  flesh 
cooking  in  pots  on  the  beach  and  knew  that  he  had  discovered  at  last 
a  land  of  the  Caribs,  the  warlike  cannibals  of  whom  he  had  heard  in 
Hispaniola.  Among  other  things  he  saw  here  his  first  pineapple  —  and 
no  doubt,  like  all  newcomers,  was  surprised  to  find  they  do  not  grow  on 
trees.  Ubiquitous  old  Ponce  de  Leon  attempted  to  colonize  the  island 

439 


440          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

in  1515,  but  was  driven  out  by  the  imminent  danger  of  being  served  up 
in  a  native  barbecue.  The  first  French  to  land  were  some  missionaries 
who  brought  the  aborigines  bodily  nourishment  instead  of  the  spiritual 
provender  they  had  planned.  It  was  not  until  the  days  of  Richelieu 
that  letters  patent  were  issued  giving  a  private  company  a  monopoly 
of  the  island,  which  was  gradually  covered  with  French  colonists  and 
sugar-cane.  African  slavery  followed  as  a  matter  of  course,  with  its 
concomitant  slave  revolts,  one  of  which  came  near  to  turning  Guade- 
loupe into  another  Haiti,  and  for  almost  two  centuries  the  history  of 
the  island  was  a  constant  succession  of  attempts  on  the  part  of  England 
to  add  it  to  her  possessions,  as  she  did  most  of  the  French  Antilles. 
Then  in  1814  a  treaty  left  it  definitely  French,  slavery  was  abolished  in 
1848,  and  since  that  day  Guadeloupe  has  followed  the  political  reverses 
and  successes  of  la  mere  patrie. 

Basse  Terre,  the  capital,  is  a  modest  little  town  on  the  southwest 
corner  of  the  mountainous  half  of  the  island  bearing  the  same  name. 
Dating  from  the  early  days  of  French  colonization,  it  once  enjoyed  a 
considerable  importance,  most  of  which  disappeared  with  the  founding 
of  Pointe-a-Pitre,  in  a  similar  corner  of  the  flat  and  more  productive 
Grande  Terre.  The  rape  of  its  commerce  by  the  parvenu  has  left  it 
merely  the  seat  of  government,  the  Washington  of  the  colony,  more 
subservient  to  its  business-bent  metropolis  than  it  likes  to  admit.  This 
French  custom  of  endowing  their  islands  with  separate  official  and 
commercial  capitals  has  its  advantages  over  the  British  scheme  of  col- 
lecting all  the  eggs  in  one  basket.  Martinique  would  have  been  left 
in  a  far  sadder  state  had  the  destruction  of  St.  Pierre  wiped  out  its 
governmental  as  well  as  its  business  center.  But  there  are  also  certain 
drawbacks  to  this  more  thoughtful  plan;  the  traveler,  for  instance, 
who  had  hoped  to  find  certain  sources  of  information  in  Basse  Terre  is 
likely  to  learn  that  they  live  at  "  la  Pointe,"  and  vice  versa. 

Built  in  the  form  of  a  spreading  amphitheater  and  climbing  a  little 
way  up  the  surge  of  ground  that  culminates  in  the  volcano  Soufriere, 
rival  of  Pelee  in  all  but  its  destructiveness,  a  scant  ten  miles  behind  it, 
the  official  capital  is  half  hidden  under  a  smothering  foliage  of  trees, 
which  stretch  away  in  a  vast  carpet  of  verdure  into  the  mountains  be- 
yond. Its  open  roadstead  is  commonly  an  unbroken  expanse  of  Carib- 
bean blue,  often  without  even  a  schooner  riding  at  anchor  to  suggest 
the  olden  days  of  maritime  industry.  Though  the  French  mail-packets 
make  this  their  last  port  of  call  before  turning  their  prows  into  the 
Atlantic,  or  the  first  on  the  outward  journey,  they  usually  come  and 


GUADELOUPE  AND  DEPENDENCIES       441 

are  gone  in  the  night,  with  few  inhabitants  the  wiser.  The  latter 
seem  to  worry  little  at  this  comparative  slight,  and  dawdle  on  through 
a  provincial  life  as  if  they  had  lost  all  hope  or  desire  to  wrest  from 
"  the  Point "  its  frequent  communion  with  the  outside  world.  An  old 
fort  half  covered  with  vegetation,  a  rambling  government  building  con- 
structed in  the  comfort-scorning,  built-to-stay  style  of  most  French 
official  structures  of  bygone  centuries,  are  almost  the  only  signs  to  dis- 
tinguish it  from  half  a  dozen  mere  bonrgs  scattered  about  the  edge  of 
the  island.  A  governor  sent  out  from  France  dwells  in  a  villa  up  in 
the  hills;  his  few  white  assistants  are  bureaucrats  tossed  at  random 
about  the  French  colonies  from  Madagascar  to  Cayenne  by  a  stroke  of 
the  pen  in  Paris,  and  they  have  little  in  common  with  the  racial  mulat- 
toes  who  dwell  in  their  uninviting,  chiefly  wooden  houses  lining  the  few 
long  and  rather  unkempt  streets  of  the  drowsy  capital,  except  an  ardent, 
almost  unquestioning  patriotism  for  la  France. 

Good  highways,  with  automobiles  scattered  along  them,  climb  into 
the  hills,  especially  to  St.  Claude,  with  its  suburban  dwellings,  its  big 
hospital,  where  boarders  in  the  soundest  of  health  are  accepted,  and  its 
embracing  view  of  the  Caribbean  already  far  below,  and  the  dome  of 
Soufriere  almost  sheer  overhead.  Higher  still  lies  Matouba,  where  one 
may  bathe  in  icy  streams  within  half  an  hour  of  the  tropic  and  enervat- 
ing sea-coast.  But  there  the  highways  cease,  dwindling  away  into  trails 
through  coffee-groves  and  verdure-vaulted  footpaths  which  are  gradu- 
ally lost  in  the  great  mountain  wilderness,  so  primitive  and  unexplored 
that  even  the  map  in  the  governor's  office  below  shows  only  a  blank 
space  for  all  the  heart  of  Basse  Terre,  the  inaccessibility  of  which  is 
typified  in  the  name  of  its  central  peak,  Mt.  Sans  Toucher.  Other  high- 
ways partly  encircle  the  rugged  half-island,  clinging  close  to  the  shore, 
but  feasible  communication  ceases  everywhere  within  a  few  kilometers 
of  the  coast.  Thus,  though  Basse  Terre  is  virgin  fertile  in  almost 
all  its  extent,  and  generously  watered  by  countless  springs  and  many 
rivers,  it  produces  little  for  the  outside  world  except  a  few  tons  of 
vanilla. 

Like  all  the  West  Indies,  it  has  almost  no  four-footed  wild  life. 
The  agouti,  of  about  the  size  of  a  rabbit  and  much  prized  for  its  savory 
flesh,  is  the  only  indigenous  quadruped.  The  raccoon,  brought  from 
our  own  land  long  ago,  has  become  acclimated  and  numerous;  the 
island  is  infested  with  an  enormous  toad  that  was  introduced  to  kill  the 
rats,  but  which  has  prodigiously  spread  without  doing  much  damage 
to  the  rodents.  Martinique  and  Guadeloupe  mutually  accuse  each 


442          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

other  of  harboring  the  deadly  fer  de  lance,  but  neither  seems  to  be 
able  to  produce  unquestionable  proof  either  of  its  own  innocence  or  of 
its  rival's  guilt. 

There  are  guaguas  also  in  the  French  islands,  where  they  are  called 
autos  de  paste.  But  there  is  little  room  in  them  compared  with  the 
demand  for  places,  and  a  curt  "  Pas  de  place  "  is  almost  certain  to  be 
the  greeting  of  the  would-be  traveler  who  does  not  buy  his  ticket  at  least 
the  day  before.  Moreover,  ticket  or  no  ticket,  it  behooves  him  to 
be  on  hand  at  the  back  of  the  post-office  well  before  the  starting-hour 
set  unless  he  would  see  his  reserved  place  squeezed  out  of  existence 
before  he  has  occupied  it  or  the  conveyance  gone  before  he  arrives. 
For  the  public  means  of  transport  in  the  French  West  Indies  have  a 
mania  for  starting  ahead  of  time  that  is  little  less  disconcerting  than  the 
manana  temperament  of  their  Spanish  neighbors,  particularly  as  their 
favorite  official  hour  of  departure  is  daybreak. 

Once  upon  a  time  the  governor  of  Guadeloupe  invited  the  officials 
of  Pointe-a-Pitre  to  a  ball  at  the  capital.  They  left  on  a  sailboat,  the 
ladies  in  evening  dress.  In  theory  it  is  a  journey  of  only  a  few  hours, 
even  in  a  sailing  vessel.  But  this  time  the  wind  turned  contrary,  after 
the  custom  of  winds,  the  boat  was  forced  to  put  to  sea,  and  it  turned 
up  six  days  afterward  —  in  St.  Thomas!  These  unhappy  experiences 
are  no  longer  required  of  the  residents  of  the  two  capitals,  for  to-day 
a  highway  equal,  except  in  spots,  to  those  of  France  connects  the  two 
towns,  nearly  fifty  miles  apart,  and  an  auto  de  paste  makes  the  round 
trip  daily.  Then,  too,  as  in  all  the  Antilles,  there  are  automobiles  for 
hire  to  those  whose  income  is  not  particularly  limited. 

The  tropical  night  showed  no  sign  of  fading  when  the  postal  omnibus, 
its  five  cross  seats  packed  with  travelers  of  both  sexes  until  its  sides 
groaned,  its  every  available  space  of  running-boards,  mud-guards,  and 
bumper  piled  high  with  mail-sacks  and  baggage,  rumbled  away  from 
the  angry  group  of  unsuccessful  passengers  gathered  before  the  Basse 
Terre  post-office.  As  we  chugged  out  through  the  old  fortress  gate,  a 
thin  streak  of  light  suddenly  developed  on  the  eastern  horizon,  widened 
with  the  rapidity  of  a  stage  effect  too  quickly  timed,  wiped  out  the 
blue-black  dome  of  sky  overhead,  and  sent  the  last  remnants  of  night 
scurrying  from  their  lurking-places  like  thieves  before  the  gigantic 
flashlight  that  sprang  above  the  rim  of  the  earth  to  the  east  with  un- 
natural, theatrical  swiftness.  In  the  darkness  I  had  taken  several  of 
my  fellow-passengers  to  be  white.  The  same  slanting  sunshine  that 


GUADELOUPE  AND  DEPENDENCIES  443 

threw  far  to  the  westward  the  disheveled  shadows  of  the  cocoanut- 
palms  betrayed  the  tell-tale  African  features  of  the  lightest  of  them. 
Behind  us  spread  a  fairy  panorama  as  we  climbed  to  Gourbeyre,  beyond 
which  another  opened  out  as  we  descended  again  through  Dole,  with  its 
"  summer  "  homes  and  its  steaming  hot-water  falls  at  the  very  edge 
of  the  road.  Having  cut  off  the  southern  nose  of  the  island  and 
regained  the  coast  once  more  at  Trois  Rivieres,  we  clung  close  to  this 
all  the  rest  of  the  journey,  as  if  any  further  encroachment  upon  the 
rugged  domain  of  Soufriere,  its  head  wrapped  in  a  purple-black  mantle 
of  clouds  above  us,  might  rouse  the  slumbering  giant  to  vent  his  wrath 
upon  puny  mankind. 

The  "  Rue  Gerville-Reache  "  in  which  we  halted  a  moment  to  ex- 
change mail-sacks  recalled  the  fact  that  the  native  of  Guadeloupe  best 
known  to  the  outside  world  is  a  woman,  as  is  the  case  with  Martinique. 
Villas  hidden  away  in  the  dense  greenery  gave  way  to  little  bay-like 
cane-fields,  some  of  them  so  large  as  to  boast  tiny  railroads,  while 
here  and  there  a  buttress  of  the  volcano  above  forced  us  out  to  the  edge 
of  the  surf.  In  the  offing  Guadeloupe's  smallest  dependencies,  a  cluster 
of  islands  named  Les  Saintes  because  Columbus  discovered  them  on 
All  Saints'  Day,  stood  forth  from  the  sea  like  the  domes  of  Oriental 
fantasy.  Now  and  again  the  chauffeur  or  his  assistant  snatched  at  a 
letter  held  out  by  some  countryman,  indifferent  to  his  shout  of  protest 
if  they  missed  it,  for  they  deigned  to  stop  only  before  the  town  post- 
offices.  The  demand  for  seats  was  continuous,  but  those  who  had  won 
them  showed  no  inclination  to  descend.  A  score  of  times  we  sped 
past  some  lady  of  color  all  dressed  up  in  her  most  resplendent  turban, 
foulard,  and  ample,  flower-printed  calico  gown,  who  had  hoped  to  go 
to  town  that  day,  the  chauffeur  indicating  by  a  disdainful  wave  of  the 
hand  across  his  body  that  there  was  "  nothing  doing."  Veritable  riots 
of  words  assailed  him  at  each  halt,  as  if  he  might  have  produced  new 
seats,  magician-like,  from  his  sleeve.  One  by  one  several  male  pas- 
sengers took  to  displaying  their  fancied  knowledge  of  English  for  my 
benefit ;  once  a  burly  schooner-captain  with  just  enough  negro  blood  in 
his  veins  to  make  his  hair  curl,  next  a  darker  pair  of  graduates  of  the 
Sorbonne,  who,  once  having  impressed  their  fellow-passengers  with 
their  extraordinary  learning,  dropped  back  into  French  again,  a  French 
more  precise  and  chosen  than  that  of  Paris,  as  soon  as  they  found  I 
understood  it. 

Even  in  the  thatched  huts  along  the  way  there  was  considerable  more 
commodite  than  in  those  of  Haiti.  The  old  semispherical  sugar-kettles 


444          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

one  finds  scattered  throughout  the  West  Indies  were  here  enclosed  in 
stones  and  mortar  and  used  as  outdoor  ovens.  At  Petit  Bourg  we  came 
out  on  the  edge  of  the  open  sea  again,  with  a  view  across  the  bay  to 
Pointe-a-Pitre,  and  behind  it  flat,  unscenic  Grande  Terre,  without  even 
a  hill  to  enliven  its  horizon.  Soon  we  dropped  down  into  a  dreary  level 
country  utterly  unlike  the  rolling  cane-covered  land  swelling  into  moun- 
tains behind  us,  and  sped  through  mangrove  swamps  that  burdened 
the  air  with  their  rotting,  salty  smell,  rumbled  across  the  stagnant 
Riviere  Salee,  six  miles  long  and  some  fifteen  feet  deep,  which  divides 
Guadeloupe  into  two  islands,  and  turned  into  a  broad,  white,  dusty 
road  that  not  long  after  became  the  main  street  of  "  La  Pointe." 

Point-a-Pitre  is  said  to  have  taken  its  name  from  the  fact  that  the 
"  point  "  on  which  it  was  founded  a  century  later  than  Basse  Terre  be- 
longed to  a  Dutchman  named  Peters.  Many  refugees  of  this  nationality 
settled  in  the  French  islands  after  the  Portuguese  drove  them  out  of 
Brazil.  The  commercial  capital  is  situated  at  the  mouth  of  the  Salt 
River,  in  one  of  the  hottest  and  most  uninviting  spots  in  the  WTest  Indies. 
Across  the  bay  Guadeloupe  proper,  piled  up  in  its  labyrinth  of  mountains 
veiled  in  the  blue  haze  of  distance,  seems  to  invite  the  perspiring  in- 
habitants to  cease  their  bargainings  and  retire  to  the  cool  heights. 
Young  as  it  is,  "  the  Point "  has  long  since  outgrown  Basse  Terre  in 
size  and  importance.  It  is  a  deadly  flat  town,  with  wide,  right-angled 
streets,  fairly  well  paved  in  a  kind  of  crude  concrete,  with  here  and 
there  a  corner  that  recalls  Paris,  as  do  the  street  names.  Its  gray 
plaster  houses  have  heavy  wooden  shutters  and  door-sized  blinds  that 
give  them  a  curiously  furtive  air.  Except  for  the  turbans  and  calicos 
of  the  negresses,  and  the  gamut  of  complexions,  it  is  rather  a  colorless 
town,  even  the  "  cathedral "  being  of  the  prevailing  gray,  unpainted 
tint,  though  set  off  by  a  slight  square  tower  in  flaming  red.  The  narrow 
entrance  to  its  capacious  bay  is  flanked  by  cocoanut-palms  that  stretch 
far  around  and  finally  envelop  it,  the  view  from  the  sea  having  little  to 
attract  the  eye.  The  central  square  pulsates  from  dawn  until  the  sun 
is  high  overhead  with  ceaselessly  chattering  market-women  dressed  in 
the  hectic  cotton  garb  peculiar  to  the  French  islands.  Down  by  the 
wharves  surges  another  market  where  fishermen  in  immense  round 
hats  come  with  their  boatloads  of  fish  and  sundry  sea-foods,  including 
the  langouste,  a  clawless  lobster  unsurpassed  for  quality  and  quantity 
of  flesh  and  selling  for  the  equivalent  of  a  quarter. 

There  are  suggestions  of  Parisian  street  life  in  Pointe-a-Pitre,  inter- 
larded with  tropical  touches  of  its  own.  Frenchmen  whose  faces  give 


GUADELOUPE  AND  DEPENDENCIES       445 

evidence  that  they  have  not  left  their  cuisine  and  wine-cellars  behind 
cling  tenaciously  to  those  white  pith  helmets  without  which  no  man 
of  their  race  thinks  he  can  endure  the  tropics.  Soldiers  and  ex-soldiers 
with  varying  degrees  of  African  complexions  stalk  about  in  their 
horizon-blue  or  colonial  khaki,  a  string  of  medals  gleaming  on  their 
chests.  Negroes  in  Napoleon  III  beards  stroll  along  the  shaded  edge 
of  the  streets  with  a  certain  Latin  dignity  befitting  such  adornment, 
even  when  it  is  accompanied  by  bare  feet.  Humped  oxen,  yoked  some- 
times on  the  neck,  more  often  on  the  horns,  saunter  through  town  with 
their  cumbersome  carts.  The  town-criers,  two  men  in  uniform,  the 
one  beating  a  drum  and  the  other  reading  aloud  an  official  notice  on 
each  corner,  carry  the  thoughts  back  to  medieval  France.  Cafes  with 
awning-shaded  tables,  monopolizing  the  sidewalks,  notices  exceedingly 
French  not  only  in  wording,  but  in  general  appearance,  posted  on 
house  and  shop  walls,  even  the  rather  run-down  aspect  of  the  buildings, 
give  the  place  a  decidedly  French  atmosphere.  If  other  proof  of  its 
nationality  were  needed,  there  are  the  crowds  of  wilted,  yet  patient, 
people  packed  about  the  wickets  of  post-office,  telegraph  station,  and 
all  other  points  where  the  public  and  the  ambitionless,  red-tape-ridden 
mortals  whom  France  appoints  to  minor  government  office  come  into 
contact. 

In  the  large,  rather  pleasantly  unkempt  park,  shaded  with  veritable 
grandfathers  among  trees,  lepers,  victims  of  the  "  big  leg,"  and  other 
loathsome  ailments  were  cutting  the  grass  with  crude  shears  and  little 
toy  hoes.  In  the  outskirts,  to  say  nothing  of  suspicious  odors  in  the 
heart  of  town,  stood  stagnant  ditches  of  unassorted  garbage.  Venders 
of  indecent  photographs  marched  brazenly  about  town,  buttonholing 
the  male  tourist  at  every  opportunity.  The  children  did  less  open 
begging  than  those  in  the  British  islands,  but  there  were  white  boys 
and  girls  among  them  whose  manners  and  appearance  showed  them  in 
a  little  less  degraded  condition  than  the  blacks.  What  a  place  Pointe- 
a-Pitre  alone  would  be  to  "  clean  up  "  to  something  approaching  our 
standards  of  sanitation  and  domestic  morals,  were  we  so  foolish  as  to 
follow  a  recent  suggestion  and  purchase  the  French  Antilles. 

We  drifted  into  a  courtroom  during  a  civil  trial.  The  room  itself 
appeared  not  to  have  been  swept  or  dusted  for  years  except  in  those 
conspicuous  central  portions  where  it  was  unavoidable ;  cobwebs  fes- 
tooned every  corner ;  little  heaps  of  debris  lay  under  nearly  every  bench. 
Yet  there  were  numerous  statues  in  and  about  the  building.  The  court 
consisted  of  three  judges,  a  white  man  in  the  middle,  flanked  by  two 


446  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

mulattos,  all  of  them,  as  well  as  the  more  or  less  negro  lawyers,  dressed 
in  black  robes  trimmed  with  "  ermine  " ;  that  is,  with  moth-eaten  rabbit" 
skin  cuffs  and  lapels.  On  their  heads  were  curious  skull-caps,  and  be- 
neath their  robes  impressed  white  or  khaki  trousers  of  a  cheap  material, 
which  suggested  that  the  high  cost  of  clothing  burdened  even  these 
lofty  officials.  A  lawyer  was  ranting  monotonously,  the  gist  of  his 
remarks  being  that  while  all  Guadeloupe  knew  that  it  was  the  desire  of 
a  gentleman  recently  deceased  to  leave  his  fortune  to  the  plaintiff,  it 
was  quite  impossible  to  carry  out  his  desires  because  he  had  neglected 
to  decorate  his  will  with  the  required  government  stamp.  Laboriously 
a  yellow  clerk,  also  in  a  robe,  sat  slowly  scratching  away  with  an  old- 
fashioned  steel  pen,  adding  to  the  stacks  of  dog-eared  hand-written 
papers  that  already  filled  a  musty  room  next  door  almost  to  over- 
flowing. Surely  there  was  no  doubt  about  Pointe-a-Pitre  being  French 
despite  the  un-Parisian  complexions  of  its  inhabitants. 

If  it  is  less  beautiful  than  the  mountainous  half  of  Guadeloupe, 
Grande  Terre  had  a  materialistic  advantage  over  the  misnamed  highland 
to  the  west.  Its  flatness  makes  it  everywhere  accessible  by  a  network 
of  good  highways.  A  broad,  white  road  stretches  out  along  the  coast 
through  the  mangroves  that  surround  the  commercial  capital,  and 
pushes  on  to  the  considerable  towns  of  Ste.  Anne,  St.  Francois,  and  Le 
Moule,  while  other  highways  crisscross  the  island,  giving  easy  com- 
munication for  all  the  sugar-mills  scattered  about  it.  More  exactly 
they  are  rum-mills,  for  the  French  islanders  give  far  more  attention 
to  their  far-famed  liquor,  and  the  cane-fields  that  all  but  cover  Grande 
Terre  serve  almost  exclusively  for  filling  casks  and  bottles.  Their 
processes  are  still  rather  primitive,  but  fortunes  have  been  won  during 
the  war,  for  all  that.  Once  out  upon  this  half  of  the  island,  the  traveler 
finds  it  has  a  few  low  hills  and  ridges,  but  they  are  so  slight  that  a 
bicycle  affords  easy  means  of  communication,  which  can  be  said  of  few 
West  Indian  islands.  Along  the  mangrove-lined  coast  are  many  shacks 
almost  as  carelessly  thrown  together  as  those  of  Haiti,  yet  all  over 
Guadeloupe  there  is  patent  evidence  that  the  negro  is  a  far  different 
fellow  when  directed  by  the  white  man  than  when  running  wild.  The 
song  of  the  jungle  by  night  is  broken  by  the  constant  roar  of  distant 
breakers  and  the  noisy,  merry  negro  voices  and  primitive  laughter 
that  explode  now  and  then  in  the  tropical  darkness,  while  fireflies  swarm 
so  thickly  that  they  look  to  the  wanderer  along  the  coast  roads  like  the 
electric-lights  of  a  large  city. 


GUADELOUPE  AND  DEPENDENCIES       447 

All  the  scattered  islets  of  the  French  West  Indies  are  dependencies 
of  Guadeloupe,  being  geographically  nearer  that  island,  leaving  Mar- 
tinique to  concern  herself  with  strictly  domestic  affairs.  The  most 
important  of  these  is  Marie  Galante,  six  leagues  south  of  Grande  Terre, 
with  fifteen  thousand  inhabitants  and  several  usines  to  turn  her  cane- 
fields  into  rum.  Les  Saintes,  Petite  Terre,  and  Desirade,  the  latter  the 
first  landfall  of  Columbus  on  his  second  voyage,  and  owing  its  name  to 
that  circumstance,  lie  somewhat  nearer  the  mother  island.  Far  to  the 
north  is  St.  Martin,  the  possession  of  which  France  also  shares  with 
Holland  despite  its  barely  forty  square  miles  of  extent,  making  it  the 
smallest  territory  in  the  world  with  two  nationalities.  No  less  interest- 
ing, though  still  more  tiny,  is  the  neighboring  isle  of  St.  Barthelemy, 
colloquially  called  "  St.  Baits."  The  inhabitants  are  chiefly  white,  and 
among  them  one  finds  the  physiognomy,  traditions,  and  customs  of 
their  Norman  ancestors.  Yet  though  they  speak  French,  it  is  only 
badly,  the  prevailing  language  being  English,  or  at  least  the  caricature 
of  that  tongue  which  many  decades  of  isolation  have  developed. 

The  history  of  "  St.  Barts  "  recalls  another  nation  that  once  had 
West  Indian  ambitions.  In  1784  Louis  XVI  ceded  the  island  to  Sweden 
in  return  for  the  right  to  establish  at  Gothenburg  a  depot  for  French 
merchandise.  But  its  isolation  and  distance  from  its  homeland  made  it 
a  burden  to  the  Swedes,  and  in  1877,  after  all  but  one  of  its  351 
inhabitants  had  voted  in  favor  of  a  return  to  French  nationality,  it 
was  handed  back  free  of  charge,  King  Oscar  II  making  a  gift  to  the 
inhabitants  of  the  eighty  thousand  francs'  worth  of  crown  property  on 
the  island.  Since  then  the  people  seem  again  to  have  changed  their 
minds,  due  probably  to  their  subjection  to  the  colored  politicians  of 
Guadeloupe.  A  few  months  ago,  when  the  Crown  Prince  of  Sweden 
called  at  "  St.  Barts  "  on  his  way  to  a  hunting  expedition  in  South 
America,  he  was  received  with  open  arms,  and  left  with  what  the 
natives  took  to  be  a  promise  to  assist  them  to  transfer  their  allegiance 
to  England  or  the  United  States,  preferably  the  latter.  Under  the  Stars 
and  Stripes,  they  argue,  their  "  great  resources  "  would  be  fittingly 
developed.  The  island  was  once  noted  for  its  pineapples,  but  the 
tendency  of  shipping  to  strike  farther  southward  and  touch  Barbados 
instead  has  ruined  this,  as  it  has  the  tree-cotton  industry.  Of  volcanic 
formation,  the  island  suffers  for  lack  of  trees  and  water,  being  forced 
to  hoard  its  rainfall  in  large  cisterns,  like  St.  Thomas.  Gustavia,  the 
capital,  was  once  rich  and  prosperous,  being  a  depot  of  French  and 
British  corsairs  who  carried  on  trade  with  the  Spanish  colonies.  There 


448          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

are  still  immense  cellars  built  to  hold  the  booty  and  merchandise,  and 
zinc  and  lead  mines  that  lie  unexploited  for  lack  of  capital.  To-day  the 
inhabitants  live  for  the  most  part  in  abject  poverty,  getting  most  of 
their  sustenance  from  the  neighboring"! slands  and  emigrating  to  Guade- 
loupe, where  they  are  noted  for  their  excellency  as  servants,  despite 
their  unf amiliarity  with  the  native  "  Creole." 


CHAPTER  XIX 

RAMBLES   IN    MARTINIQUE 

MARTINIQUE,  though  considerably  smaller  than  Guadeloupe, 
from  which  it  is  separated  by  the  British  island  of  Dominica, 
probably  means  more  to  the  average  American,  possibly 
because  within  the  memory  of  the  present  generation  it  was  the  scene 
of  the  greatest  catastrophe  in  the  recorded  history  of  the  Western 
hemisphere.  Some  forty  miles  long  and  averaging  about  half  of  that 
in  width,  it  is  essentially  volcanic  in  origin,  untold  centuries  of  eruptions 
having  given  it  an  almost  unbrokenly  mountainous  character,  heaping 
up  those  many  mornes  and  pitons,  as  its  large  and  small  cone-shaped 
peaks  are  called,  which  stretch  from  its  one  end  to  the  other.  Its  latest 
census,  now  ten  years  old,  credited  it  with  184,000  inhabitants,  ten 
thousand  of  whom  consider  themselves  pure  white.  Martinique  is 
fond  of  calling  herself  the  "  Queen  of  the  French  Antilles,"  a  title  not 
wholly  without  justification,  and  to  cite  the  fact  that  Cayenne  and 
Guadeloupe  are  subservient  to  her  in  certain  governmental  matters  as 
proof  that  she  is  the  favorite  American  child  of  the  mother  country. 

The  traveler  who  disembarks  in  the  harbor  of  Fort  de  France,  capital 
of  Martinique  since  1680,  is  sure  to  have  impressed  upon  him  the  fact 
that  the  negro  with  French  training  is  even  more  inefficient  under  excite- 
ment than  the  excitable  Gaul  himself.  Barely  has  the  steamer  come  to 
anchor  when  her  gangway  becomes  a  shrieking,  struggling,  all  but 
immovable  mass  of  barefoot  boatmen,  of  more  or  less  negro  policemen, 
custom  employees,  hotel  runners,  porters,  ships'  agents,  embarking  and 
disembarking  passengers,  and  venders  of  minor  local  products,  all 
ignorant  of  that  sophomoric  law  of  physics  that  descending  and  ascend- 
ing bodies  cannot  occupy  the  same  place  at  the  same  time.  Bags, 
bundles,  crates,  valises,  and  trunks  are  dragged  helter-skelter  down  this 
seething  sloping  bedlam,  one  of  the  latter  now  and  then  eluding  the 
grasp  of  the  struggling  boatman,  who  is  forced  to  dedicate  one  hand 
to  his  own  safety,  and  splashing  into  the  sea,  there  to  float  serenely 
about  for  some  moments  until  it  is  rescued  single-handed  by  the  same 
hare-brained  individual.  For  the  bateliers  of  the  French  Antilles  do 
not  believe  in  mutual  cooperation.  Three  trunks  suffered  this  particu- 

449 


450          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

lar  fate  during  our  landing,  but  our  own  luck  was  less  trying,  the  only 
mishap  being  that  the  boat  loaded  with  all  our  worldly  baggage,  forced 
beyond  the  grasp  of  its  owner  by  his  clamoring  rivals,  began  to  float 
serenely  out  to  sea. 

By  some  stroke  of  genius,  indispensable  to  those  who  have  been 
denied  the  lesser  gift  of  common  sense,  the  fellow  succeeded  in  rescuing 
his  craft  before  the  swift  tropical  night  had  completely  blotted  it  out, 
and  a  quarter  of  an  hour  later  we  scrambled  up  the  end  of  a  long, 
slender,  not  to  say  drunken  and  decrepit,  wooden  pier  all  but  invisible 
in  the  thick  darkness.  A  youth  beside  whom  Rachel  looked  tall  re- 
quired assistance  in  placing  the  trunk  on  his  head,  but  once  under  it 
he  requested  that  the  valises  be  piled  on  top  of  it  and  scurried  away 
as  if  he  had  nothing  on  his  mind  but  the  aged  felt  hat  that  served  him 
as  a  pad.  The  douane  was  dirty,  ramshackle,  and  lighted  only  with  a 
pair  of  weak  oil  torches,  but  its  officials  were  so  courteous  that  we  were 
not  even  required  to  lower  our  possessions  from  the  bearer's  head  to 
the  floor.  A  hotel  facing  the  savanna  resembled  the  hang-outs  of 
Parisian  apaches,  but  it  was  in  some  ways  preferable  to  spending  the 
night  in  the  park.  Luckily  the  "  choice  room  "  into  which  we  were 
shown  was  only  dimly  lighted  by  a  flickering  candle. 

"  Et  le  bain?  "  I  queried,  as  the  chambermaid  was  hurrying  away  to 
resume  her  role  as  waitress. 

"  Bath  ?  "  she  murmured  reminiscently,  thrusting  her  turban-crowned 
African  face  back  into  the  room.  "  Oh,  yes,  there  is  a  tub  below  but  — 
but  it  does  n't  function." 

"No1  water?" 

"  Plenty  of  water,  monsieur,  but  the  stopper  has  been  lost." 

"  What  do  people  do  ?  " 

"  When  messieurs  les  clients  wish  to  bathe,  they  sit  in  the  tub  and 
pour  water  on  themselves,  but  —  " 

"  Generally  they  don't  wish  to  ?  "  I  concluded  caustically,  but  the 
intended  sarcasm  was  completely  lost  on  the  femme-de-chambre,  who 
replied  with  fetching  simplicity,  "  No,  usually  not,  monsieur." 

Luckily,  the  departure  of  a  flock  of  tourists  next  day  gave  us  admit- 
tance to  the  one  tolerable  hotel  in  the  French  West  Indies. 

A  few  weak  electric-light  bulbs  scattered  here  and  there  in  the  dense 
humid  darkness  did  not  give  the  town  a  particularly  inviting  aspect. 
On  the  broad  grassy  savane  there  was  scarcely  light  enough  to  see 
where  one  was  going,  which  made  progress  perilous,  for  the  habits  of 
personal  sanitation  of  the  French  islanders  are  not  merely  bad;  some 


of  them  are  incredible.  The  French  themselves  being  none  too  careful 
in  such  matters,  it  is  hardly  to  be  expected  that  their  negro  subjects 
would  develop  high  standards.  Few  streets  are  well  paved,  most  of 
them  have  open  gutters  down  each  side,  but  the  slope  of  the  town  is 
fortunately  sufficient  to  keep  the  running  water  clear  except  at  about 
eight  in  the  morning,  which  is  the  hour  chosen  by  householders  to  get 
rid  of  their  accumulated  garbage. 

Though  it  was  merely  Friday  evening,  a  band  was  playing,  and 
playing  well,  a  classical  program  in  the  savanna  kiosk.  Frenchmen,  in 
huge  pith  helmets  that  gave  them  the  aspect  of  wandering  toadstools, 
were  strolling  under  the  big  trees  of  the  immense,  grassy  square.  With 
them  mingled,  apparently  on  terms  of  complete  equality,  their  colored 
compatriots,  the  women  in  Parisian  hats  or  the  chic  little  turban,  with 
its  single  protruding  donkey-ear,  peculiar  to  Martinique,  according  to 
their  social  standing,  the  men  in  the  drab  garb  of  the  mere  male  the 
world  over.  There  was  not  exactly  a  boisterousness,  but  a  French 
freedom  from  restraint  which  gave  the  gathering  an  atmosphere  quite 
different  from  similar  ones  in  the  more  solemn  British  West  Indies. 
Among  the  most  interesting  features  of  the  Antilles  is  to  note  how 
closely  the  imitative  negroes  resemble  in  manner,  customs,  and  tempera- 
ment their  ruling  nations.  Yet  one  conspicuous  feature  of  French  night 
life  was  absent  from  that  of  Fort  de  France  —  the  aggressively  amorous 
female  of  the  species. 

By  day  we  found  the  center  of  the  savane  occupied  by  the  white 
marble  statue  of  the  most  famous  native  of  Martinique,  the  Empress 
Josephine.  Surrounded  by  a  quadrangle  of  magnificent  royal  palms, 
a  bas  relief  of  her  crowning  by  Napoleon  set  into  the  pedestal,  a  medal- 
lion portrait  of  her  imperial  husband  in  one  hand,  she  gazes  away  to- 
ward her  birthplace  across  the  bay  with  an  expression  which  in  certain 
lights  suggests  a  wistful  regret  for  ever  having  left  it.  But  it  is  a 
flitting  expression ;  most  of  the  time  she  is  visibly  the  proud  Empress 
of  the  French,  and  still  the  idol  of  her  native  Martinique,  for  all  her 
checkered  story.  Of  other  statues  the  most  conspicuous  is  that  of 
Schoelcher,  the  Senator  from  the  Antilles  who  fathered  the  emancipa- 
tion of  the  slaves,  decorating  the  untended  little  plot  before  the  Palais 
de  Justice. 

In  the  sunlight  Fort  de  France  has  a  cheerful  aspect.  About  the 
edge  of  the  savanna  are  several  open-air  cafes,  some  of  them  housed 
in  tents,  none  of  them  free  from  clients  even  in  the  busiest  hours  of 
the  day.  The  town  swarms  with  women  in  that  gay  costume  of  Mar- 


452          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

tinique,  which  suggests  moving-picture  actresses,  dressed  for  their  ap- 
pearance before  the  camera,  rather  than  staid  housewives  and  market- 
women  engaged  in  their  unromantic  daily  tasks ;  some  of  its  buildings 
rival  them  in  the  African  gorgeousness  of  their  multicolored  walls. 
Almost  wholly  destroyed  by  fire  thirty  years  ago,  it  has  nothing  of  the 
ancient  air  to  be  found  in  many  West  Indian  cities,  though  some  of  its 
comparatively  modern  structures  are  already  sadly  down  at  heel.  Once 
it  was  of  secondary  importance,  a  mere  capital,  like  Basse  Terre  in 
Guadeloupe,  but  the  destruction  of  St.  Pierre  increased  its  commercial 
prosperity,  and  its  twenty-seven  thousand  inhabitants  of  ten  years  ago 
have  considerably  increased  since  then.  The  decrepit  horse-carriages 
of  the  last  decade  have  almost  wholly  given  way  to  automobiles,  Ameri- 
can in  make  by  virtue  of  the  war,  and  aware  of  their  importance  in  an 
island  with  neither  tramways  nor  railroads.  Window  glass,  uncalled 
for  in  the  tropics,  is  almost  unknown,  wooden  jalousies  taking  the  place 
of  it  when  the  blazing  sunlight  or  a  driving  storm  demands  the  closing 
of  its  habitually  wide-open  houses. 

Its  "  best  families,"  few  of  them  free  from  a  touch  of  the  tar-brush, 
have  the  customs  of  family  isolation  of  the  France  of  a  century  ago ;  its 
mulatto  rank  and  file  have  the  negro's  indifference  to  publicity  in  the 
most  intimate  of  domestic  affairs.  If  one  may  judge  by  the  prevalence 
of  ugly  French  pince-nez,  the  whites  and  "  high  yellows  "  find  the  glaring 
sunlight  and  light-colored  streets  trying  to  the  eyes.  Seen  from  any 
of  the  several  hills  high  above,  the  town  is  dull-red  in  tint,  flat  and  all 
but  treeless,  except  for  its  green  rectangular  savane,  only  the  openwork 
red  spire  of  the  cathedral  protruding  above  the  mass.  Yet  when  the 
sun  plays  its  cloud  shadows  across  it,  and  the  musical  bells  of  its  single 
church  are  tolling  through  one  of  the  interminable  funerals,  the  Fort 
Royal  of  olden  days  is  well  worth  the  stiff  climb  an  embracing  view 
of  it  requires. 

The  cathedral  is  modern,  decidedly  French  in  atmosphere  despite 
strong  negro  leanings.  Some  of  its  stained-glass  windows  depict  the 
native  types,  mulatto  acolytes  attending  a  white  bishop,  backed  by  the 
well-done  likenesses  of  worshipers  in  the  striking  female  costume  of 
the  island,  with  a  male  in  solemn  Sunday  dress  thrown  in  between  for 
contrast.  One  wonders  why  the  Spanish-Americans  have  not  also 
adopted  so  effective  a  form  of  decoration  instead  of  clinging  tenaciously 
to  the  medieval  types.  In  the  congregation  few  pure  whites  are  to  be 
seen,  except  for  the  priests,  and  the  nuns  who  herd  their  scores  of  girl 


RAMBLES  IN  MARTINIQUE  453 

orphans  in  brown  ginghams  and  purple  turbans  into  the  gallery  pews. 
The  collection  is  taken  up  by  a  black  priest  —  who  gives  change  to  those 
who  have  not  come  supplied  with  the  customary  small  coin  —  but  the 
officiating  curates  are  wholly  French.  The  lives  they  lead,  if  one  may 
judge  from  certain  indications,  are  more  of  a  credit  to  their  church 
than  those  of  their  colleagues  in  the  Spanish  tropics. 

Sunday  in  Fort  de  France  is  not  the  deadly  dull  Sabbath  of  the 
British  West  Indies.  The  market  and  many  of  the  shops  are  open  in 
the  morning ;  the  cooler  hours  of  the  afternoon  find  the  town  enlivened 
with  strollers,  from  the  ramparts  of  grim  old  Fort  St.  Louis  to  the 
banks  of  the  Riviere  Madame,  lined  by  vari-colored  boats  drawn  up  out 
of  the  water,  with  whole  jungles  of  nets  hung  out  to  dry,  with  carelessly 
constructed  little  houses,  in  the  shadows  of  which  squat  chattering, 
boisterously  laughing  negroes.  The  evening  is  one  of  the  three  during 
the  week  on  which  the  movies  function.  We  attempted  one  night  to 
attend  the  largest  of  these.  A  long  line  of  automobiles  was  disgorging 
noisy,  overdressed  natives  of  all  colors  except  pure  white.  About  the 
doors  squatted  scores  of  turbaned  women,  each  waiting  patiently  for 
some  admirer  to  supply  her  with  a  ticket;  a  swarm  of  ragged  young 
black  rascals  blocked  the  entries,  casting  insolent  glances,  if  not  audible 
remarks,  at  the  more  attractive  women,  particularly  if  they  chanced 
to  be  white.  Black  policemen  garbed  in  resplendent  white  uniforms 
for  once  in  the  week,  stood  gossiping  in  groups,  waving  to  their  friends, 
doing  everything  except  making  any  attempt  to  keep  order.  Then,  if 
further  proof  of  the  genuine  Frenchness  of  Fort  de  France  were  needed, 
there  was  a  clawing,  shrieking  mob  wedged  in  an  impenetrable  mass 
about  a  wicket  six  inches  square  and  waist-high,  in  which  one  negro 
kept  his  face  plastered  for  ten  minutes,  trying  in  vain  to  agree  with 
whomever  was  behind  it  on  the  purchase  of  a  paper  ticket.  The 
French  have  many  fine  qualities,  but  public  orderliness  is  not  one  of 
them,  particularly  when  African  blood  runs  in  their  veins. 

The  great  covered  market  of  Fort  de  France  is  daily  the  scene  of 
a  similar  uproar.  By  day  it  presents  a  kaleidoscopic  panorama  of 
venders  and  buyers  in  every  known  shade  of  garb  and  complexion ;  by 
dark,  when  it  remains  open  that  late,  it  suggests  some  drunken  inferno. 
Bargaining  is  one  of  the  chief  amusements  of  the  West  Indian  negro ; 
when  he  has  been  reared  in  a  French  environment  he  seems  to  find 
double  joy  in  it.  Every  purchase  is  the  occasion  for  an  extended 
quarrel  which  stops  short  of  nothing  but  actual  fisticuffs.  A  slice  of 


454          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

meat  tossed  from  the  scales  into  a  purchaser's  basket  invariably  brings 
a  shriek  of  protest  from  the  seller.  The  buyer  has  "  short-changed  " 
him!  Buyers  always  do,  unless  they  are  the  despised  tourists  who 
always  foolishly  pay  the  first  price  -demanded.  A  mighty  shouting 
arises  over  the  scene  of  contention;  it  increases  to  an  uproar  that  is 
almost  audible  above  the  general  hubbub.  The  meat  and  the  money 
are  snatched  back  and  forth  a  score  of  times;  foul  names  are  seen, 
if  not  heard,  on  the  thick  lips  of  the  shrieking  opponents ;  a  copper  is 
added  to  the  handful  of  now  bloody  coins,  withdrawn  again  as  the 
seller  slashes  a  match-sized  strip  off  the  maltreated  slice  of  meat ;  copper 
and  strip  are  once  more  conceded,  the  screams  grow  deafening,  until 
at  length  a  bargain  is  struck,  and  the  two  part  company  with  friendly 
nods  that  are  mutual  promises  to  engage  in  similar  entertainment  on 
the  morrow.  The  tiny  portions  of  Haitian  markets  are  not  found  in 
those  of  the  French  Antilles.  Whole  boxes  of  matches,  entire  yams, 
sometimes  as  many  as  two  or  three  bananas  change  hands  in  one 
single  transaction.  Many  a  matron  whose  purchases  do  not  sum  up  to 
more  than  three  or  four  pounds  is  followed  by  a  porter,  who  gathers 
them  into  his  basket.  A  few  of  these  burden-bearers  are  white  men, 
beings  sunk  so  low  that  they  slink  about  among  the  haughty  and  more 
muscular  negroes  like  creatures  who  are  only  permitted  to  live  on 
suffrance;  for  both  the  French  islands  have  dwarfish  types  of  similar 
history  to  the  "  Chachas  "  of  St.  Thomas. 

The  traveler  in  the  Lesser  Antilles  finds  himself  almost  wholly  cut 
off  from  the  world's  news.  It  is  a  rare  cable  that  has  not  been  broken 
for  months,  if  not  for  years,  and  the  local  newspapers  are  faintly 
printed  little  rags  through  which  one  may  search  in  vain  for  a  hint  of 
the  happenings  outside  the  particular  island  on  which  one  chances  to  be 
marooned.  Instead  of  news,  the  front  pages  are  taken  up  with  local 
political  squabbles,  and,  in  the  French  islands,  with  challenges  to  duels, 
set  in  the  largest  type  available.  Let  it  not  be  supposed,  however,  that 
these  lead  to  any  great  amount  of  bloodshed.  In  virtually  all  cases  the 
long  series  of  letters  exchanged  between  the  contestants,  or,  more 
exactly,  between  their  seconds,  and  set  down  at  full  length  in  the 
public  prints,  end  on  some  such  tone  as : 

Messieurs  Pinville  and  Larcher,  representing  M.  Marc  Larcher,  and  MM. 
Binet  and  Hantoni,  representing  M.  Louis  Percin,  having  met  in  the  city  hall  in 
the  matter  of  a  demand  for  satisfaction  from  M.  Marc  Larcher  by  M.  Persin,  on 
account  of  an  article  in  the  "  Democratic  Coloniale  "  of  March  2Oth,  came  to  an 
agreement  that  there  was  a  misunderstanding  between  M.  Percin  and  M.  Marc 


RAMBLES  IN  MARTINIQUE  455 

Larcher,  neither  the  one  nor  the  other  having  ever  had  the  intention  of  making 
any  allegations  which  should  encroach  upon  the  private  life  of  either. 

In  consequence,  they  declare  the  incident  irrevocably  closed. 

Done  in  duplicate  at  Fort  de  France,  March  23,  1920, 

and  signed  by  the  pacifiers.  Thus  the  principals  have  impressed  upon 
their  fellow-citizens  their  chivalrous  code  of  honor  and  undaunted 
courage,  the  seconds  have  won  a  bit  of  personal  publicity,  and  no  harm 
has  been  done.  In  a  way  the  Martinique  system  has  its  advantages  over 
the  more  direct  American  method  of  a  pair  of  black  eyes. 

A  coast  steamer  leaves  Fort  de  France  every  morning  at  peep  of  dawn 
for  what  was  once  the  larger  city  of  St.  Pierre.  For  three  hours  it 
chugs  northwestward  along  the  coast,  dotted  with  little  fisher  villages 
half  hidden  behind  cocoanut-palms  and  the  long  lines  of  pole-supported 
nets  drying  beneath  them.  Here  and  there  it  halts  to  pick  up  or  dis- 
charge passengers  in  rowboats,  and  to  take  on  the  capital's  daily  supply 
of  milk  —  in  five-gallon  Standard  Oil  tins  corked  with  handfuls  of 
of  leaves.  The  sea  is  usually  pond-smooth  here  under  the  lee  of  the 
island.  Many  sandstone  cliffs  as  absolutely  sheer  as  if  they  had  been 
cut  with  a  gigantic  knife  line  the  way,  with  little  shrines  at  the  foot  of 
most  of  them  to  keep  them  from  falling  into  the  sea.  Behind,  the 
verdant  mountains  climb  steeply  into  the  sky,  as  if,  the  island  being  a 
bare  twenty  miles  wide,  they  must  make  the  most  of  the  space  allotted 
them.  The  coast  is  speckled  with  fishermen  in  broad,  trapezoidal 
straw  hats,  standing  erect  in  their  precarious  little  boats  or  setting  their 
nets  for  the  day's  catch.  Their  method  is  simple.  Half  a  dozen  of 
them  fence  in  a  great  oval  stretch  of  water  near  the  shore  with  a  single 
net  hundreds  of  yards  long  and  weighted  on  one  side.  Then,  when 
only  the  floating  support  blocks  remain  above  the  surface,  they  proceed 
to  throw  stones  into  the  enclosure,  to  pound  the  water  with  their 
paddles,  to  splash  about  like  men  gone  suddenly  mad.  Apparently  the 
fish  rise  to  see  what  all  the  commotion  is  about,  for  half  an  hour  later 
the  fishermen  begin  to  drag  their  net  inshore,  and  the  haul  is  seldom 
less  than  several  boatloads  of  the  finny  tribe,  of  every  size  from  the 
coli  roux,  resembling  the  sardine,  to  mammoth  fish  that  must  be  quickly 
clubbed  to  death  for  safety  sake,  and  of  every  variety  known  to  the 
tropical  seas.  Already  the  inhabitants  of  the  neighboring  villages  are 
trooping  down  to  the  shore  with  their  native  baskets  and  makeshift 
receptacles,  and  by  the  time  the  net  is  stretched  out  on  its  poles  to  dry 
the  last  of  the  catch  has  been  sold  and  carried  away. 


456 

But  we  are  nearing  St.  Pierre.  Carbet,  the  last  stop,  where  Colum- 
bus landed  just  four  centuries  before  the  great  catastrophe,  is  falling 
astern,  and  as  we  round  its  protecting  nose  of  land  the  flanks  of  Pelee 
rise  before  us,  broken  and  wrinkled"  and  cracked  and  heaped  up  in 
scorched  brown  slopes  that  end  in  blue-black  clouds  clinging  tenaciously 
about  the  volcano's  head,  as  if  to  shield  the  murderous  old  rascal  from 
detection.  This  same  steamer,  one  of  the  crew  who  served  in  the  same 
capacity  in  those  days  tells  us,  barely  escaped  from  the  disaster  that 
overwhelmed  the  chief  city  of  the  Lesser  Antilles.  She  had  left  St. 
Pierre  at  daybreak  —  for  her  itinerary  was  reversed  when  the  capital 
played  second  fiddle  to  her  commercial  rival  —  and  was  entering  the 
harbor  of  Fort  de  France  when  two  mighty  explosions  that  seemed  to 
shake  all  Martinique  "  set  us  praying  for  our  friends  in  St.  Pierre." 
Next  day  she  returned,  only  to  find  —  but  just  here  our  informant  was 
called  away  to  help  in  the  landing,  and  left  us  to  picture  for  ourselves 
the  sight  that  met  his  eyes  as  he  steamed  into  this  open  roadstead  on 
that  memorable  morning. 

Ships  no  longer  anchor  off  St.  Pierre.  For  one  thing,  a  shelf  of  the 
sea  floor  was  broken  off  during  the  eruption,  and  left  the  harbor  all 
but  unfathomable.  Besides,  the  world's  shipping  passes  ruined  St. 
Pierre  by  now,  and  only  this  little  coaster  comes  daily  to  tie  up  to  a 
tiny  pier  where  once  stretched  long  and  busy  wharves.  At  the  end 
of  it  one  is  confronted  by  a  statue,  a  nude  female  figure  which  is 
meant  to  be  symbolical  of  the  ruined  city  in  the  day  of  its  agony. 
But  the  effect  is  unfortunate.  For  the  thing  is  so  inartistically  done 
that  it  suggests  a  lady  of  limited  intelligence  crawling  out  of  her  bath- 
room after  having  inadvertently  blown  out  the  gas  —  and  the  ludicrous 
seems  out  of  place  in  one's  first  pilgrimage  to  the  American  Pompeii. 

The  St.  Pierre  of  the  beginning  of  this  century  was  the  most  impor- 
tant city  of  the  French  West  Indies.  More  than  that,  it  was  noted 
throughout  the  Caribbean  for  its  beauty,  gaiety,  and  commercial 
activity.  It  was  a  stone  city,  of  real  cut  stone,  built  in  a  perfect  amphi- 
theater sloping  gently  down  to  the  deeply  blue  sea,  and  cut  sharply  off 
at  the  rear  by  sheer  hills  that  spring  quickly  into  mountains.  White 
pirogues  and  the  pleasure  boats  of  its  wealthier  inhabitants  balanced 
themselves  in  its  bay  among  steamers  and  sailing  vessels  from  all 
parts  of  the  world.  Its  boulevards  were  lined  with  splendid  shade 
trees;  its  Jardin  des  Plantes  ranked  among  the  world's  best  botanical 
collections ;  it  had  electric  lights  and  the  only  tramways  in  the  Lesser 
Antilles ;  its  bourse  was  as  busy  in  its  way  as  our  own  Wall  Street. 


RAMBLES  IN  MARTINIQUE  457 

Masses  of  gorgeous  flamboyants,  of  red  and  purple  bougainvillea, 
decorated  its  open  places  and  its  commodious  residences,  which  stretched 
away  into  flowery  suburbs  with  half  a  dozen  pretty  French  names. 
In  a  way  it  had  copied  Paris  too  closely,  for  its  night  life  was  hectic 
with  "  sadly  famous  "  casinos,  with  gaiety  unconfined ;  it  felt  a  certain 
pride  in  hearing  itself  called  the  "  naughtiest  city  in  the  West  Indies." 

St.  Pierre  was  proud  of  the  old  volcano  that  seemed  to  watch  with 
a  fatherly  care  over  the  destinies  of  the  city  at  its  feet.  Never  within 
the  memory  of  the  living  generation  had  it  given  a  sign  of  wrath.  A 
pretty  little  lake  filled  its  crater,  with  fongeres  and  begonias  and  soft 
velvety  moss  growing  about  its  shores.  To  the  Pierrotins  it  had  long 
been  the  chosen  place  for  picnics  and  Sunday  excursions. 

Yet  never  was  a  people  given  fuller  warning  of  impending  disaster. 
As  early  as  February  in  their  final  year  of  1902  the  inhabitants  com- 
menced to  complain  of  a  sulphurous  odor  from  the  mountain.  During 
the  following  month  dense  clouds  began  to  rise  about  its  summit.  "  Old 
Pelee  is  smoking  again,"  the  people  told  one  another,  laughingly;  but 
not  a  man  of  them  dreamed  that  their  old  playmate  meant  them  any 
harm.  On  April  22  a  light  earthquake  broke  the  cable  to  Dominica. 
On  the  twenty-fourth  a  rain  of  cinders  fell  on  all  the  northern  part  of 
the  island.  The  Sunday  following  saw  many  pleasure  parties  mounting 
to  the  crater-lake  to  watch  the  playfulness  of  "  old  Pelee  "  at  close 
range.  On  the  twenty-eighth  great  growlings  were  heard,  as  if  some 
mammoth  bear  were  struggling  to  escape  from  his  prison  in  the  bowels 
of  the  earth.  From  the  beginning  of  May  cinders  fell  almost  daily  over 
all  Martinique.  Steam  rose  from  the  crater ;  bursts  of  fire,  like  magni- 
fied lightning  flashes,  played  about  the  volcano's  summit;  the  clouds 
grew  so  dense  that  the  days  were  a  perpetual  twilight,  the  water-supply 
was  half-ruined  by  the  soot  it  carried.  On  the  fifth  a  great  deluge  of 
boiling  mud  swept  down  the  River  Blanche,  completely  submerging  a 
large  sugar-factory  on  the  edge  of  St.  Pierre  and  killing  several  persons. 
Great  rocks  came  rolling  down  the  mountainside;  the  cable  between 
Fort  de  France  and  Santo  Domingo  parted ;  rivers  were  everywhere 
overflowing  their  banks  ;  cinders  fell  continuously ;  the  vegetables  which 
the  market-women  brought  down  from  the  hills  were  covered  with 
ashes. 

St.  Pierre  began  to  lose  its  nerve.  But  the  optimists  asserted  that 
the  worst  was  over.  A  decrease  in  the  fall  of  cinders  on  the  following 
day  seemed  to  bear  out  their  assertions,  though  trees  were  breaking 
under  the  weight  of  ashes,  and  the  cable  to  St.  Lucia  was  disrupted, 


458  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

completely  cutting  Martinique  off  from  the  outside  world.  The  men 
of  St.  Pierre  felt  that  they  could  not  abandon  their  affairs  for  a  mere 
display  of  gigantic  fireworks ;  their  families  refused  to  leave  husbands 
and  fathers  for  their  own  selfish  safety's  sake;  no  doubt  pride  kept 
many  of  the  inhabitants  from  fleeing.  A  scientific  commission  in  the 
capital  assured  the  frightened  city  that  it  was  in  no  danger  whatever  — 
scientists  have  been  known  to  make  serious  mistakes  on  similar  occa- 
sions. The  governor  and  his  wife  came  to  St.  Pierre  to  lend  the  re- 
assurance of  their  presence,  and  the  city  took  on  a  calmer  demeanor 
and  went  on  about  its  business. 

On  the  night  of  May  7  a  torrential  rain,  accompanied  by  unprece- 
dented thunder  and  lightning,  swept  over  the  island.  That,  the  people 
told  themselves,  was  a  sign  that  the  danger  was  over.  The  eighth 
dawned  fresh  and  clear.  The  vapors  from  the  crater  went  straight 
up  and  floated  away  on  the  trade-wind.  The  inhabitants  forgot  their 
fears  and  began  to  prepare  for  a  jour  de  grande  fete,  for  it  was 
Ascension  Day.  Then  suddenly,  at  eight  o'clock,  two  mighty  ex- 
plosions that  were  heard  as  far  off  as  Dominica  and  St.  Lucia  had 
barely  subsided  when  an  enormous  black  cloud  with  bright  streaks  in 
it  rolled  down  from  the  crater  at  express  speed,  enveloped  St.  Pierre, 
halted  abruptly  a  few  hundred  yards  north  of  the  neighboring  village 
of  Carbet,  and  floated  slowly  -away  before  the  wind.  The  pride  of  the 
French  West  Indies,  with  its  twenty-eight  thousand  inhabitants,  had 
been  completely  wiped  out  in  the  space  of  forty-five  seconds. 

That  night  the  wreck  of  a  steamer,  its  superstructureless  deck  strewn 
with  a  score  of  charred  and  dismembered  bodies,  crawled  into  the 
harbor  of  St.  Lucia. 

"  Who  are  you  ?  "  shouted  the  crowd  gathered  on  the  wharves,  "  and 
where  do  you  come  from  ?  " 

"  We  come  from  hell,"  shouted  back  the  only  surviving  officer. 
"  You  can  cable  the  world  that  St.  Pierre  no  longer  exists." 

Eighteen  years  have  passed  since  the  destruction  of  St.  Pierre,  and 
it  is  still  little  more  than  a  fishing  village.  From  the  waterfront  one 
gets  an  impression  of  partial  recovery;  once  landed,  one  finds  only  a 
fringe  of  houses  along  the  sea,  frail  wooden  houses  with  little  resem- 
blance to  the  old  stone  city.  Sloping  wharves  of  stone,  strewn  with 
broken  and  rusted  lamp-posts,  with  worthless  iron  safes,  and  the  twisted 
remnants  of  anchor  chains,  accommodate  only  a  few  fishing  canoes 
instead  of  their  former  bustling  ocean-going  traffic.  Back  of  the  one 
partly  restored  street  lies  a  labyrinth  of  old,  gray  cut-stone  ruins  choked 


RAMBLES  IN  MARTINIQUE  459 

with  the  rampant  vegetation  which  does  its  concealing  work  quickly  and 
well  in  the  tropics.  From  the  beach  to  the  sheer  green  mountain  wall 
behind,  a  dark-gray  lava  dust  everywhere  covers  the  natural  soil,  and 
from  this  fertile  humus  a  veritable  jungle  has  sprung  up.  Former  par- 
lors are  filled  with  growing  tobacco ;  banana  plants  wave  their  huge 
leaves  from  out  what  were  once  secluded  family  residences ;  one  can  get 
lost  in  the  hills  of  lava,  so  overgrown  are  they  with  forests  of  brush, 
of  manioc,  hedgewood,  and  thorny  brambles.  The  remnants  of  stone 
walls  ready  to  fall  down  at  the  least  tremor  of  the  earth  force  the 
cautious  visitor  to  make  many  a  detour.  Here  are  great  stone  stair- 
ways that  lead  nowhere ;  there  massive  buttresses  upholding  nothing. 
Ivy  and  climbing  plants  drape  the  low  jagged  walls  of  former  rollicking 
clubs  and  solemn  government  buildings.  Narrow  paths  squirm  through 
the  thorny  brush  where  once  were  crowded  city  streets.  Of  the  five 
large  churches  that  adorned  St.  Pierre,  only  a  piece  of  the  tower,  a 
fagment  of  the  curved  apse,  and  a  bit  of  the  fagade  of  the  great  stone 
cathedral,  once  among  the  most  important  in  the  West  Indies,  peer 
above  the  surrounding  vegetation.  The  entrance  hall  and  the  tiles  of 
the  main  aisle  lead  now  to  a  tiny  wood-and-tin  church  built  in  the  center 
of  the  former  structure.  Rusted  iron  pillars,  hanging  awry  or  com- 
pletely fallen,  help  the  brush  to  choke  up  the  interior;  a  pathetic  old 
iron  saint,  without  head,  arms,  or  feet,  leans  against  the  outer  wall  as 
if  he  were  still  dazed  by  the  fall  from  his  niche  above.  Gaunt  black 
pigs  roam  everywhere  through  the  ruins,  the  silence  of  which  is  seldom 
broken  except  by  the  wind  whispering  through  the  leaves  and  the 
murmur  of  the  running  water  with  which  the  ghost  of  a  city  is  still 
abundantly  supplied. 


A  marvelous  view  of  the  whole  scene  may  be  had  from  a  hill  to  the 
south  of  the  amphitheater,  where  the  stone  bases  of  what  were  evi- 
dently once  splendid  suburban  residences  are  also  choked  with  brush 
and  brambles.  From  this  height  the  sea  is  of  so  transparent  a  blue 
that  one  seems  to  see  on  its  bottom  the  reflection  of  the  fishing  canoes 
scattered  about  the  bay.  The  single  restored  street,  once  the  main 
artery,  cuts  the  ruined  city  in  two  with  a  heavy  gray  line.  On  either 
side  of  this  is  a  broken  row  of  houses,  some  roofed  with  somber  tin, 
others  with  red  tiles  that  are  already  beginning  to  take  on  the  brown- 
ish tint  of  age.  But  these  few  colors,  as  well  as  the  rare  human 
noises  that  ascend  on  the  breeze,  are  but  slight  contrast  to  the  gray 


460  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

lifelessness  of  all  the  valley,  so  funereal  in  its  general  aspect  that  the 
gaily  blossoming  trees  seem  strangely  out  of  place  in  it.  There  is  a 
mild  suggestion  of  Machu  Picchu,  the  lost  city  of  the  Peruvian  high- 
lands, in  this  view  of  ruined  St.  Pierre,  with  its  countless  gray  stone 
walls  and  gables  standing  forth  above  the  deep  green  of  the  vegetation 
that  covers  all  else.  The  gables  stand  in  almost  perfect  rows,  like  the 
headstones  of  an  immense  graveyard,  so  that  the  little,  bare,  lava- 
covered  cemetery  with  its  tiny  white  wooden  crosses  back  near  the 
foot  of  the  mountain-wall  has  a  pathetic,  almost  ludicrous  aspect, 
like  the  pretense  of  cement-made  "  rustic "  furniture,  for  the  whole 
town  is  one  vast  cemetery. 

On  closer  inspection  one  finds  more  inhabitants  than  are  suggested 
by  the  first  glimpse.  Dozens  of  drygoods-box  shacks  are  hidden  away 
in  the  lee  of  towering  stone  walls  that  seem  on  the  very  point  of 
toppling  over.  Hovels  of  grass  and  thatch  come  suddenly  to  light  as 
one  scrambles  through  the  jungles  of  former  palace  courtyards  and 
lava-razed  fortresses.  The  buoyant  faith  and  trust  of  humanity  laughs 
in  the  end  at  such  catastrophes  even  as  that  of  St.  Pierre.  We  halted 
to  talk  with  some  of  the  denizens  of  these  improvised  homes  among 
the  ruins.  An  old  negro  and  his  wife  in  one  of  them  had  lost  their 
four  children  in  the  disaster.  The  woman  had  been  sent  by  her 
mistress  on  an  errand  into  the  country  an  hour  before  it  occurred; 
the  man  had  seen  a  long  row  of  peasants  bound  for  market  killed  up  to 
within  a  few  feet  of  where  he  was  working  on  the  roadside,  and  a 
stone  had  fallen  upon  his  back,  crippling  him  for  life.  Yet  a  few 
years  later  they  had  returned  to  build  their  shelter  on  the  very  spot 
where  their  children  had  fallen. 

"  We  could  n't  stand  it  in  Fort  de  France,"  explained  the  old  man. 
"  It  was  always  raining,  stinking,  full  of  mud  and  fever."  As  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  there  is  scarcely  an  iota  of  difference  in  climate  between  the 
two  cities,  but  homesickness  easily  gives  false  impressions. 

If  St.  Pierre  is  not  yet  rebuilt,  it  is  not  because  of  fear,  but  by  rea- 
son of  the  fact  that  only  a  scattered  handful  of  its  inhabitants  were  left 
alive.  In  the  city  itself  there  was  one  survivor,  a  negro  prisoner  con- 
fined in  a  deep  dungeon  from  which  he  was  rescued  four  days  later. 
Only  those  who  chanced  to  be  away  from  home  or  in  the  far  outskirts 
outlived  that  fateful  May  morning.  Yet  already  it  has  several  dis- 
tilleries, half  a  dozen  schools,  a  post-office  and  telephone  station,  a 
gendarmerie,  and  two  or  three  makeshift  hotels.  The  inhabitants 
are  more  kindly,  soft-mannered  beings  than  those  of  the  capital,  as  if 


RAMBLES  IN  MARTINIQUE  461 

the  disaster  had  tamed  their  souls.  But  even  they  are  beginning 
to  demand  the  restoration  of  their  city  to  the  rank  of  a  municipality. 
At  present  it  is  not  even  a  commune,  but  a  suburban  dependency  of  the 
neighboring  village  of  Carbet.  Its  streets  are  unlighted  at  night;  five 
hundred  market  women  crowd  the  little  Place  Bertin  daily  in  blazing 
sunshine  or  drenching  rain,  for  lack  of  a  covered  market.  Only  by 
its  re-creation  into  a  separate  municipality,  insist  its  inhabitants,  will 
these  things  and  many  like  them  be  remedied;  and  once  they  are, 
St.  Pierre  will  begin  to  take  on  its  old  importance  and  grow  rich  and 
prosperous  once  more.  Meanwhile  old  Pelee,  cold  and  inexorable, 
sloping  majestically  upward  from  the  blue  Caribbean  in  broken, 
wrinkled,  treeless,  brown  grandeur,  seems  to  look  down  upon  the 
optimistic  little  creatures  at  his  feet  with  a  grim,  sardonic  smile. 

I  set  out  to  climb  the  volcano  that  afternoon,  halting  at  Morne  Rouge 
for  the  night.  From  St.  Pierre  a  good  highway  climbs  abruptly  into 
the  hills,  along  the  lava  cliffs  of  the  Riviere  Blanche,  once  seething 
with  boiling  mud,  now  glass-clear  again,  with  washerwomen  toiling 
here  and  there  along  its  banks.  During  the  eruption,  the  first  visitors 
after  it  ceased  assure  us,  blocks  of  lava  a  hundred  cubic  meters  in  size 
were  thrown  out  by  the  monster,  and  the  tropical  rains  falling  on  these 
red-hot  ingots  produced  all  manner  of  violent  phenomena.  To-day 
these  giant  blocks  are  broken  up  into  far  smaller  masses,  or  have  dis- 
integrated entirely  into  lava  soil  of  great  fertility.  Forty  square  miles 
were  utterly  devastated  on  that  May  morning,  not  a  living  thing  re- 
maining within  that  area.  But  if  nature  destroys  in  one  swift  flare, 
it  also  reconstructs  quickly  in  these  tropical  regions.  Lava  valleys 
full  of  waving  bamboos,  cliffs  lined  with  splendid  tree-ferns,  patches 
of  sugar-cane  stretching  up  the  steep  slopes  seemed  to  belie  the  story 
of  destruction,  while  swarms  of  children  about  the  frequent  huts, 
many  of  the  boys  in  poilu  caps,  the  gay  little  girls  with  frizzled  tresses, 
sometimes  covered  with  replica  of  their  mothers'  gay  turbans,  showed 
that  even  mankind  was  recovering  from  the  devastation.  For  the 
"  race  suicide "  of  continental  France  is  not  duplicated  in  her  West 
Indian  colonies. 

Morne  Rouge  sits  on  a  ridge  of  one  of  the  great  buttresses  that 
uphold  Pelee,  towering  4429  feet  above  the  Caribbean,  with  dimen- 
sions not  unsimilar  to  those  of  Vesuvius.  It,  too,  was  destroyed, 
though  some  months  later  than  St.  Pierre,  but  many  of  its  inhabitants 
took  warning  in  time  and  have  returned  to  reconstruct  the  place  to 


462  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

almost  what  it  was  before.  By  some  miracle,  according  to  the  French 
parish  priest  with  whom  I  spent  the  night,  its  huge  church  all  but 
escaped  damage,  and  only  the  cross  on  its  spire,  still  tipsy  after  eigh- 
teen years,  recalls  the  ordeal  through  which  it  passed.  Wild  be- 
gonias and  many  flowering  shrubs  give  the  scattered  town  the  air  of 
a  semi-tropical  garden,  and  the  spreading  view  of  the  Caribbean,  al- 
ready far  below,  enhances  the  beauty  of  its  situation. 

The  ascent  of  Pelee  is  neither  dangerous  nor  particularly  difficult 
for  an  experienced  pedestrian.  If  I  accepted  the  guidance  of  "  Pat- 
rice," at  the  curate's  suggestion,  it  was  rather  because  of  the  weather 
than  for  any  other  reason.  The  morning  was  gloomy,  with  heavy, 
intermittent  showers,  and  the  dense  clouds  that  covered  all  the  upper 
half  of  the  volcano  made  it  unlikely  that  a  stranger  could  follow  un- 
assisted the  path  to  the  summit,  though  on  a  clear  day  there  would 
have  been  no  difficulty.  It  was  so  cold  that  I  shivered  visibly  in  my 
summer  garb.  Negroes  in  bare  feet  but  wrapped  to  the  ears  in  heavy 
poilu  overcoats,  squatted  in  the  doors  of  their  huts  along  the  highway 
we  followed  for  several  miles  farther.  Then  we  struck  upward 
through  steeply  sloping  fields,  already  soaked  from  hat  to  shoes  by 
the  drenching  downpours  that  soon  became  one  continual  deluge.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  "  Patrice  "  did  not  boast  the  latter  article  of  dress, 
which  made  it  easier  for  him  to  cling  to  the  narrow  path  down  which 
poured  a  veritable  brook.  But  he  was  more  than  once  for  turning 
back,  and  only  the  fear  of  what  my  host  of  the  night  might  say  if 
he  abandoned  a  "  helpless  stranger  who  had  been  put  in  his  special 
charge  "  urged  him  on.  "  Patrice  "  was  three-fourths  negro, —  what 
the  Haitians  call  a  griff e  and  the  Martiniquais  a  capre, —  but  somehow 
one  did  not  think  of  his  color,  possibly  because,  like  many  of  the  French 
islanders,  he  seemed  to  be  almost  unconscious  of  it  himself,  and  he 
had  not  a  trace  of  that  mixture  of  aggressiveness  and  obsequiousness 
of  our  own  and  the  British  blacks.  His  mind  was  a  curious  con- 
glomeration of  learning,  picked  up  heaven  knows  where,  and  patches 
of  the  most  astonishing  ignorance,  but  he  knew  Pelee  as  a  child  knows 
its  own  back-yard. 

This  was  fortunate,  for  it  was  a  day  in  which  it  would  have  been 
more  than  easy  to  go  astray.  Only  once  or  twice  in  the  ascent  did 
the  fog  lift,  giving  a  glimpse  of  both  the  Atlantic  and  the  Caribbean, 
of  Morne  Rouge  half  hidden  in  its  verdure,  and  the  green-gray  site 
of  what  was  once  St.  Pierre.  Great  fields  of  tree-ferns,  whole  moun- 
tainsides of  them,  showed  in  these  brief  intervals  of  visibility,  with 


RAMBLES  IN  MARTINIQUE  463 

deeply  wooded  valleys  and  steep  peaks  and  ridges  entirely  covered 
with  vegetation;  nowhere  the  bare  rocks  and  patches  of  lava  I  had 
expected.  Mountain  "  raspberries,"  the  same  inviting  but  rather  taste- 
less fruit  which  the  Porto  Ricans  miscall  fresas,  lined  the  way  almost 
to  the  summit,  enticing  us  to  halt  and  eat  regardless  of  the  downpour. 
Once  during  the  last  sheer  miles  we  had  a  brief  view  of  the  rim  of  the 
crater,  like  the  edge  of  a  world  broken  off  by  some  cataclysm  of  the 
solar  system.  But  when  we  had  surmounted  this  and  paused  on  the 
brink,  there  was  nothing  to  be  seen  except  an  immense  void  filled 
with  swirling  white  mist. 

"  Patrice "  knew  the  value  of  patience,  however,  and  for  a  long 
shivering  hour  we  waited.  Then  all  at  once  the  cloud-curtain  was 
snatched  away  for  the  briefest  instant,  and  at  our  feet  lay,  not  the 
quarry-like  crater  of  the  imagination,  but  a  great  valley  filled  with 
a  scrub  vegetation  which  might  have  been  duplicated  in  the  highlands 
of  Scotland.  Across  it,  like  a  mammoth  monument,  the  "  needle " 
that  marks  the  summit,  in  the  new  form  which  the  latest  eruption 
left  it,  stood  out  against  the  sky  a  mere  rifle-shot  away.  Then  the 
mists  swept  in  again,  as  if  nature  were  some  busy  caretaker  who  had 
little  time  to  waste  on  mere  sight-seers,  and  left  us  to  find  our  way 
as  best  we  could  out  of  the  little  cell-like  chamber  of  fog  in  which 
we  were  inclosed. 

We  descended  by  a  path  that  "  Patrice  "  knew,  even  in  the  clouds, 
to  the  bottom  of  the  crater.  Gigantic  rocks  of  every  possible  form  lay 
tumbled  everywhere,  but  so  completely  were  they  covered  with  light 
vegetation  that  only  this  closer  view  revealed  their  existence.  Here 
and  there  was  a  fumerole,  or  smoke-hole,  from  which  issued  light 
clouds  of  vapor  indistinguishable,  except  in  temperature,  from  the 
swirling  mists  in  which  they  were  quickly  merged.  We  crawled  into 
one  of  these,  half-covered  with  a  hoodlike  boulder,  and  at  once  lost  the 
chill  that  had  pervaded  our  very  bones.  The  vent  was  like  some  mam- 
moth chimney-corner,  with  a  damp,  sulphurous  heat  which  quickly 
induced  sleepiness  and  a  desire  to  stretch  out  and  let  the  world  be- 
low go  hang.  That  and  the  bottle  of  syrupy  Martinique  rum  which 
"  Patrice  "  had  been  foresighted  enough  to  bring  with  him  allayed  any 
fear  of  mishap  from  exposure,  and  we  ate  our  lunch  in  as  homelike 
comfort  as  if  the  wintry  winds  and  pouring  rain  outside  were  a  thou- 
sand leagues  distant. 

The  descent  was  swifter  than  we  would  have  had  it,  thanks  to  the 
rain-soaked  slopes,  and  almost  before  I  realized  it  we  were  down  in 


464          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

the  brilliant  tropical  sunshine  again,  great  clumps  of  bamboos  casting 
a  welcome  shade  over  the  ever  more  level  trail  and  the  mountainsides 
of  tree-ferns  again  high  above  us.  At  Ajoupa  Bouillon  (ajoupa,  a  hast- 
ily constructed  shelter,  is  one  of  the  few  Carib  words  which  has  sur- 
vived) we  rejoined  the  highway  and  parted  company,  "  Patrice  "  dubi- 
ous of  a  "  helpless  stranger's  "  ability  to  find  his  way,  even  along  a 
public  road.  But  as  I  showed  no  inclination  to  add  another  five-franc 
note  to  his  unusual  day's  income  for  being  piloted  to  the  north  coast, 
he  took  his  leave  with  a  doleful  countenance  and  pattered  away  in  the 
direction  of  Morne  Rouge. 

Everything  I  wore  or  carried  was  still  dripping  wet.  I  turned 
aside  into  the  first  open  meadow  and  spread  out  all  of  which  I  could 
in  decency  divest  myself,  the  blazing  sunshine  drying  it  with  magical 
rapidity.  One  felt  immensely  more  of  a  sense  of  civilization  here  than 
in  Haiti.  There  a  lone  white  man  would  have  hesitated  to  lie  down 
beside  the  highway,  even  had  there  been  one.  Here  one  seemed  as 
secure  as  in  the  heart  of  France.  Yet  there  was  little  outward  dif- 
ference between  the  Haitians  and  the  simple,  kindly  country-people 
who  plodded  constantly  past,  the  women  carrying  big  bundles  on  their 
heads.  The  hats  they  secured  by  laying  the  load  over  one  rim  flapping 
behind  them,  balancing  their  burdens  with  a  cadenced  swing  of  the 
hips,  their  legs  bare  to  the  knees.  The  men  were  fewer  and  seldom 
carried  anything.  In  the  fields  were  flocks  of  cattle;  the  little  houses 
were  all  built  close  to  the  road,  for  cacos  are  unknown  in  Martinique. 
Vehicles  were  few  despite  the  excellence  of  the  leisurely  French  high- 
way. The  great  mass  of  the  islanders  do  their  traveling  on  foot,  the 
wealthy  by  automobile ;  but  the  latter  are  not  numerous  enough  to  give 
the  pedestrian  much  annoyance. 

As  I  neared  the  coast,  the  rolling  hills  turned  to  cane-fields,  stretch- 
ing clear  down  to  the  edge  of  the  Atlantic.  Compared  with  Cuba  or 
Porto  Rico,  the  methods  were  primitive,  or  more  exactly,  diminutive. 
Children,  women,  and  old  men  picked  up  the  cut  canes,  one  by  one,  tied 
them  in  bundles  with  the  top  leaves,  and  slowly  carried  them  to  small 
ox-carts  in  which  they  were  laboriously  stood  on  end,  bundle  by  bundle. 
These  workers  received  two  francs  a  day  —  fifteen  cents  at  the  then  rate 
of  exchange.  Men  in  the  prime  of  life  were  paid  four  francs  fifty 
centimes  for  such  work  as  hoeing  or  transferring  the  ox-cart  loads  into 
the  little  four-wheeled  railroad  cars  which  bore  them  away  to  the  fac- 


RAMBLES  IN  MARTINIQUE  465 

tory.  Cane-cutters,  however,  working  by  the  tache,  earned  as  much  as 
twelve  francs  a  day. 

Unlike  the  smaller  British  islands,  the  French  Antilles  have  not 
put  all  their  faith  in  sugar.  Cane  products,  however,  form  by  far 
the  most  important  industry.  If  their  exports  of  sugar  decreased  by 
half  during  the  war,  it  is  because  the  making  of  rum  proved  more 
advantageous,  especially  as  France  requisitioned  their  sugar  at  less 
than  half  the  price  in  the  open  market.  In  the  very  years  when  the 
United  States  was  adopting  its  prohibition  amendment,  Martinque  and 
Guadeloupe  increased  their  rum  production  by  some  forty  per  cent. 
The  present  almost  unprecedented  prosperity  of  the  islands  is  mainly 
due  to  the  distilled  cane  juice  they  sent  overseas  while  their  sons  were 
battling  at  the  front.  But  here,  too,  there  are  loud  protests  at  the  in- 
equality of  distribution  of  that  prosperity.  Three-fourths  of  the  is- 
land, the  Martiniquais  complain,  belongs  to  five  families,  of  pure 
French  blood,  who  intermarry  among  themselves,  keeping  the  estates 
and  the  chief  usines  in  a  sort  of  closed  corporation.  If  a  bit  of  land 
is  offered  for  sale,  the  complaint  continues,  these  families  bid  it  in  at 
any  price  demanded  in  order  to  freeze  out  "  les  petits."  The  fact  that 
the  latter  may  also  be  white  men  does  not  alter  the  attitude  of  the 
monopolists.  Moreover,  the  small  planter  is  ruthlessly  exploited  by 
the  large  distillers,  who  pay  him  fifty  to  sixty  francs  a  ton  for  his 
cane  and  sell  their  rum  at  seven  francs  a  liter.  One  finds,  therefore, 
among  the  middle-class  whites  a  considerable  number  of  still  patriotic 
but  disgruntled  citizens. 

A  little  story  which  was  going  the  rounds  during  our  stay  in  Mar- 
tinique shows  that  the  game  of  "  high  finance  "  can  be  played  even  on 
a  twenty  by  forty  mile  island.  A  "  high  yellow "  native  who  had 
never  been  credited  with  extraordinary  intelligence  "  cleaned  up  "  three 
million  francs  during  the  last  year  of  the  war  by  the  following  simple 
little  scheme.  France  decreed  that  the  freight  rate  between  Mar- 
tinique and  French  ports  should  be  three  hundred  francs  a  ton.  The 
ships  secretly  refused  space  at  that  price.  The  "  high  yellow  "  in- 
dividual entered  into  a  private  agreement  with  the  steamship  companies 
to  pay  the  price  asked,  1200  francs  a  ton.  While  his  competitors  were 
complaining  that  they  could  not  ship,  this  man's  rum  was  being  carried 
to  Europe,  where  it  was  sold  at  a  high  price,  but  not  one  at  which, 
his  rivals  pointed  out  to  one  another,  he  could  make  any  profit  at  such 
exorbitant  freight  rates.  The  man  persisted,  however,  paying  for 


466  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

each  shipment  by  check  as  soon  as  it  was  landed.  With  the  last  barrels 
he,  too,  went  to  France.  There  he  wrote  a  polite  note  to  the  steamship 
company,  requesting  that  he  be  refunded  the  nine  hundred  francs  a 
ton  he  had  paid  over  the  legal  rate.  The*  company  laughed  loudly  at 
his  colonial  naivete.  He  put  his  check  stubs  in  the  hands  of  a  lawyer, 
and,  to  cut  short  the  story,  the  company  suddenly  recognized  the  bitter 
truth  in  the  assertion  that  he  who  laughs  last  shows  superior  mirth. 

I  halted  that  night  in  Lorrain,  on  the  edge  of  a  small  bay  with 
precipitous  shores  into  which  the  Atlantic  threshed  constantly,  and 
next  morning  caught  the  lumbering  auto  de  poste,  having  had  the  fore- 
sight to  reserve  a  place  in  it  some  days  earlier.  Even  though  we 
clung  to  the  coast,  the  road  climbed  continuously  over  the  buttresses  of 
the  central  mountain  chain,  for  these  smaller  West  Indian  islands  have 
virtually  no  real  flat  lands.  From  the  tops  of  the  higher  ridges  we 
could  plainly  make  out  Dominica  on  the  horizon  behind  us.  Some  of 
the  hillsides  were  built  up  in  terraced  gardens,  though  without  stone 
facings,  in  which  grew  among  other  favorite  native  vegetables,  gname, 
as  Martinique  calls  the  malanga  of  Cuba  or  the  poi  or  taro  of  the 
South  Seas.  The  chauffeur  had  small  respect  for  any  possible  nerves 
among  the  passengers,  and  tore  about  the  constant  curves  and  incessant 
ups  and  downs  of  the  ridge-braced  coast  as  if  speed  were  far  more 
essential  than  ultimate  arrival.  The  coast-line,  ragged  as  a  shattered 
panel,  with  pretty,  old-as-France  towns  nestled  in  each  scolloped  bay, 
presented  many  a  beautiful  vista.  Here  and  there  we  crossed  a  little 
cane  railroad,  some  of  the  fields  that  fed  them  so  precipitous  that  the 
bundles  of  cane  were  shot  down  across  the  ravines  on  wire  trolleys. 
At  Trinite,  with  its  long  peninsula  stretching  far  out  into  the  Atlantic, 
we  turned  inland  and  climbed  quickly  into  the  hills.  Here  there 
were  a  few  Chinese  and  Hindu  features,  but  the  overwhelming  ma- 
jority were  negroes,  though  full-blooded  Africans  were  almost  rare. 
The  Frenchman  is  inclined  to  overlook  the  matter  of  color  in  his  at- 
tachments, with  the  result  that  mulattoes  are  much  more  numerous  in 
the  French  than  in  the  British  islands.  There  is  a  great  difference,  too, 
in  what  might  be  called  public  discipline.  To  cite  one  of  many  ex- 
amples: one  of  our  fellow-passengers  crowded  into  the  coach  with  an 
immense  plate-glass  mirror  without  a  frame.  A  mishap  at  any  of  the 
sharp  turns  or  steep  descents  might  easily  have  shattered  it  and  seri- 
ously injured  the  score  of  persons  huddled  within  the  vehicle.  But 
though  the  one  white  traveler  besides  myself  kept  repeating  during  all 
the  rest  of  the  journey,  "  Mais  c'est  excessivement  danger  eu.v"  the  mir- 


RAMBLES  IN  MARTINIQUE  467 

ror  remained.  In  the  British  islands  the  mere  attempt  to  enter  a 
public  vehicle  with  such  an  object  would  probably  have  resulted  in  a 
solemn  case  in  a  magistrate's  court  that  same  morning.  Near  Gros 
Morne  were  several  hills  completely  covered  with  pineapples,  the 
cultivators  climbing  along  the  rows  as  up  and  down  a  ladder.  Then 
suddenly  we  came  out  high  above  the  great  bay  of  Fort  de  France,  the 
square  chimneys  of  a  dozen  rum  usines  dotting  the  almost  flat  lands 
about  it,  and  descended  quickly  through  ever  more  populous  villages 
to  the  capital. 

I  returned  to  St.  Pierre  one  morning  for  a  walk  through  the  heart 
of  the  island.  An  excellent  road  in  rather  bad  repair  unites  the  ruined 
city  and  the  capital,  a  distance  of  tweny-five  miles.  It  climbs  quickly 
into  beautiful,  cool,  green  mountains.  When  one  says  mountains  in 
the  West  Indies  the  word  must  be  taken  with  a  rather  diminutive  mean- 
ing, for  though  they  are  real  mountains  in  formation,  and  sometimes  in 
massiveness,  the  greater  part  of  them  is  under  water.  Old  sugar 
estates  dating  from  the  high-priced  Napoleonic  days,  with  half  per- 
pendicular cane-fields,  surrounded  the  first  few  steep  kilometers.  Then 
the  ascent  grew  more  leisurely,  though  it  mounted  steadily  for  some 
three  hours  up  the  valley  of  the  Carbet.  If  one  was  to  believe  the 
French  guidebook  in  my  pocket,  I  was  engaged  in  a  perilous  under- 
taking. 

"  One  must  remember,"  it  warned,  "  that  Martinique  is  a  tropical 
country,  and  the  act  of  exposing  oneself  to  climbing  a  slope  on  foot  or 
of  blowing  up  a  bicycle  tire,  even  in  the  shade  " —  the  paragraph 
was  addressed  to  cyclists,  for  the  writer  would  never  have  suspected 
a  visitor  to  Martinique  of  deliberately  turning  pedestrian  — "  is  danger- 
ous. A  tropical  helmet,"  he  asserted  on  another  page,  "  and  a  flannel 
stomach-band  are  indispensable."  How  I  have  succeeded  in  covering 
many  thousand  miles  of  the  tropics  on  foot  without  harnessing  myself 
up  in  those  indispensable  contrivances  is,  no  doubt,  a  mystery.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  the  chatter  of  sedentary  imaginations  aside,  tramping 
is  no  more  risky  in  the  West  Indies  than  in  the  midsummer  Cat- 
skills. 

During  the  first  few  miles  I  met  many  fierce-looking  mulattoes  in 
flaring  piratical  mustaches  and  kinky  Napoleon  III  beards,  carrying 
in  their  hands  big,  sharp-pointed  cane-knives,  but  every  passer-by  bade 
me  a  soft,  kindly,  respectful  "  Bonjour,  monsieur  " ;  they  had  not  even 
the  hypocritical  obsequiousness  or  the  occasional  insolence  of  the  Brit- 


468          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

ish  negro.  Beyond  Fond  St.  Denis  the  way  descended  somewhat  along 
another  beautiful  valley,  its  slopes  densely  wooded,  a  small  river  boil- 
ing over  the  rocks  at  its  bottom.  The  Pitons  du  Corbet  bulked  majest- 
ically into  the  sky  overhead ;  a  lower  peak  between  them  was  completely 
covered  with  tree-ferns.  Then  the  highway  began  to  mount  again,  dis- 
closing magnificent  new  panoramas  at  every  turn.  It  was  a  soft- 
footed  road,  and  in  these  higher  reaches  almost  entirely  untraveled. 
The  rich  center  of  the  island  was  surprisingly  uninhabited.  The  un- 
failing trade-wind  swept  down  through  the  mountain  passes  to  the 
left ;  hurrying  clouds  broke  the  fury  of  the  tropical  sun ;  there  was 
splendid  drinking  water  everywhere,  usually  carried  out  to  the  edge 
of  the  road  in  bamboo  troughs  stuck  into  the  sheer  mountain-side.  The 
climb  ended  at  two  huts  and  a  shrine,  dignified  with  the  name  of  Deux 
Choux,  whence  another  highway  descended  to  Robert,  on  the  Atlantic. 
My  own  paused  for  a  marvelous  view  back  down  the  dense  green 
valley  to  cloud-capped  Pelee  and  a  broad  stretch  of  the  Caribbean  be- 
yond St.  Pierre,  then  came  out  on  a  tiny  meadow  with  grazing  cattle, 
a  lonely  little  hut,  and  a  temperate  climate.  A  wonderfully  symmetrical 
green  peak  stood  directly  overhead,  with  another,  its  summit  lost  in 
the  clouds,  breaking  the  horizon  beyond.  Martinique,  one  was  forced 
to  admit,  was  as  beautiful  in  its  small  way  as  Porto  Rico,  even  though 
it  lacks  the  red-leafed  bucare,  the  color-splashes  of  orange-trees,  and 
the  snow-like  tobacco-fields.  A  deep  stillness  reigned,  emphasized 
rather  than  broken  by  the  murmur  of  some  distant  little  stream,  the 
creaking  of  an  insect  far  off  in  the  wilderness,  now  and  then  a  gust  of 
wind  which  set  the  ferns  and  the  bamboo  plumes  to  whispering  to- 
gether. Once  I  thought  I  heard  a  groan,  but  it  proved  to  be  only  the 
native  boute  I  was  smoking,  struggling  for  air.  Little  wooden  shrines 
were  here  and  there  set  into  the  mountain  walls,  the  garments  of  the 
dolls  they  inclosed  tattered  and  weather-rotted. 

Some  eight  miles  from  the  capital  a  gap  in  the  hills  gave  a  wide- 
spreading  view  of  the  Atlantic,  the  Caribbean,  and  all  the  southern  half 
of  Martinique,  tumbled,  mottled  by  sunshine  and  cloud  shadows,  more 
brown  than  this  central  region,  the  three  little  islands  that  mark  the 
birthplace  of  a  French  empress  dotting  the  dense-blue  bay.  Houses 
and  people  began  to  appear  again,  happy-go-lucky  little  huts,  though 
with  far  more  pride  in  their  appearance  than  those  of  Haiti ;  then 
came  the  "  summer  villas  "  of  the  wealthier  citizens  of  Fort  de  France, 
until  the  road  became  one  long  suburb.  A  branch  to  the  right  de- 
scended to  the  hot  baths  of  Absalon ;  farther  on  another  pitched  down- 


RAMBLES  IN  MARTINIQUE  469 

ward  to  those  of  Didier,  both  at  the  bottom  of  an  immense  cleft  in  the 
hills,  and  an  hour  later  I  was  plodding  through  the  hot,  dusty,  crowded 
streets  of  gaily-turbanned  Fort  de  France. 

The  people  of  the  French  Antilles  have  many  of  the  characteristics 
of  the  continental  Frenchman.  His  faults  and  his  virtues  are  theirs, 
the  former  magnified,  the  latter  shrunken,  as  is  the  way  with  the  negro. 
In  outward  demeanor  they  have  little  in  common  with  the  British  West 
Indian,  still  less  perhaps  with  our  own  blacks.  They  are  much  less 
given  to  outbursts  of  insolence  and  are  more  courteous.  But,  like  the 
Frenchman,  they  are  impulsive  and  individualistic,  hence  one  cannot 
generalize  too  broadly.  I  have  met  some  of  the  most  genuinely  cour- 
teous persons  in  "  French  America,"  mulattoes,  capres,  and  even  full 
negroes,  with  the  outward  evidences  of  a  culture  superior  to  that  of 
any  but  our  best  class ;  I  have  met  others  who  made  me  temporarily  a 
firm  believer  in  the  righteousness  of  Judge  Lynch.  The  former  were 
decidedly  in  the  majority ;  there  were  many  who  were  rather  over  polite. 
But,  like  that  of  the  French,  their  politeness  is  individual,  never  col- 
lective. After  being  treated  with  incredible  courtesy  by  the  few  with 
whom  one  has  come  into  personal  contact,  one  is  astounded  to  find 
the  crowds  almost  brutal.  The  country  people  are,  of  course,  more 
courteous  than  the  corresponding  classes  in  the  capital ;  the  women 
are,  on  the  whole,  less  so  than  the  men,  another  direct  legacy  from  the 
French.  The  islanders  have,  too,  something  of  that  French  custom  of 
not  showing  surprise  at  strange  sights  or  personal  idiosyncrasies,  that 
same  quality  that  makes  it  so  easy  to  live  in  Paris.  A  white  man  on 
foot,  for  instance,  rarely  seems  to  attract  even  a  passing  attention;  in 
the  British  islands  he  is  the  constant  butt  of  inquiry,  comment,  and 
crude  attempts  at  ridicule,  though  he  is  an  equally  unusual  sight  in 
either  group  of  islands.  All  these  things  are  visibly  the  result  of 
environment  and  the  negro's  monkey-like  faculty  for  imitation.  From 
the  capre  up  he  takes  on  certain  other  qualities  from  his  white  parents, 
though  they  seldom  equal  the  original.  The  one  pleasant  trait  native 
to  the  negro  —  his  gaiety  and  lack  of  gloom  —  is  tempered  in  the  French 
islands  by  a  sort  of  Latin  pensiveness,  while  his  sense  of  personal  dig- 
nity is  distinctly  higher  than  that  among  the  former  British  slaves. 

His  superiority  to  the  Haitian  is  ample  proof  of  the  advantage  of 
having  the  negro  ruled  over  by  whites,  even  though  that  rule  be  faulty, 
instead  of  letting  him  run  wild.  He  has  more  sense  of  responsibility, 
more  industry,  and  a  civic  spirit  which  the  Haitian  has  almost  com- 


470          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

pletely  lost.  All  this  tends  to  make  him  comparatively  law-abiding. 
There  are  few  country  police  in  the  French  islands,  and  they  are  not 
numerous  in  the  towns,  yet  the  stranger  may  wander  at  will  and 
rarely  meet  even  with  annoyance.  Barrels  of  rum  are  left  unguarded 
for  weeks  in  the  streets  or  on  the  wharves  of  Guadeloupe  or  Martin- 
ique, and  the  case  is  almost  unknown  of  their  being  broached  or  in  any 
way  molested.  Even  our  own  land  scarcely  aspires  to  that  high 
standard.  White  women  may  go  freely  anywhere  with  far  less  likeli- 
hood of  meeting  with  disrespect  than  in  many  Caucasian  lands. 

The  French  negro's  superiority  of  deportment  is  partly  due,  no 
doubt,  to  the  higher  sense  of  equality  he  enjoys  under  the  tricolor.  The 
color  line  exists,  but  it  is  less  direct,  less  tangible,  more  hidden  than 
with  us.  When  the  white  inhabitants  speak  of  it  at  all  it  is  apt  to  be 
in  whispers.  "  Creoles  "  shake  hands  with,  and  show  all  the  outward 
signs  of  friendship  to  their  colored  neighbors;  bi-colored  functions, 
business  partnerships  between  the  two  races  are  common,  yet  the 
whites  avoid  social  mixture  as  far  as  they  dare.  I  say  "  dare  "  because 
that  is  exactly  the  word  which  seems  to  fit  the  case.  The  French  ap- 
pear to  have  a  certain  fear  of  their  negroes,  if  not  actual  physical 
fear,  at  least  a  disinclination  to  show  them  discourtesy  by  referring  to 
the  matter  of  color.  In  fact,  the  colored  population  may  be  said  to 
have  the  upper  hand.  The  laws  of  the  islands  are  made  in  France, 
but  each  of  them  sends  a  senator  and  two  deputies  to  Paris,  and  equal 
suffrage  gives  the  whites  small  chance  of  winning  these  offices ;  they 
have  still  less  of  being  elected  to  municipal  and  colonial  councils. 

"  It  was  a  great  mistake  to  give  the  negroes  the  vote,"  more  than 
one  white  islander  assured  me,  in  an  undertone,  "  for  it  leaves  us 
whites  swamped  beneath  them.  With  negroes  voting,  justice  goes 
almost  invariably  to  the  man  who  is  a  friend  of  the  depute,  and  the 
latter  is  never  white." 

"  Our  colored  population  should  be  handled  with  a  firm  hand,"  said 
a  white  colonial  from  the  island  of  St.  Martin,  "  but  of  course  you 
cannot  expect  the  French  to  do  that." 

Fortunately  for  the  whites,  there  is  a  considerable  amount  of  fric- 
tion between  the  negroes  and  the  "  gens  de  couleur,"  and  the  blacks  are 
often  more  friendly  to  the  Caucasian  element  than  to  those  partly  of 
their  own  race. 

Even  the  "  Creole  "  of  the  islands  under  French  rule  is  more  orderly 
than  that  of  Haiti.  A  knowledge  of  French  is  sufficient  to  carry  on 
conversation  with  all  classes,  though  the  language  of  the  masses  falls 


RAMBLES  IN  MARTINIQUE  471 

/ar  short  of  Parisian  perfection.  Curious  local  expressions  are  numer- 
ous. "  Li "  means  either  il  y  a  or  il  est;  the  banana  we  know  is  a 
"  gro'  femrne"  the  tiny  ones  which  seldom  reach  our  markets  are 
"  figues  naines " —  literally  "  dwarf  figs."  "  Who  "  becomes  "  Qui 
monde,"  an  improvement  at  least  over  the  "  Qui  monde  ga  "  of  Haiti. 
Innumerable  localisms  of  this  kind,  added  to  a  slovenly  pronuncia- 
tion, make  the  popular  tongue  difficult  for  the  stranger,  but  at  least  he 
is  not  called  upon  to  guess  the  meaning  of  scores  of  terms  from  the 
African  dialects  such  as  pepper  the  Haitian  jargon. 

Though  French  money  is  current,  Guadeloupe  and  Martinique  issue 
notes  of  their  own  of  from  five  francs  upward.  As  these  look  exactly 
alike,  except  for  the  name  of  the  island  printed  upon  them,  yet  are  not 
mutually  accepted,  the  inexperienced  traveler  is  sometimes  put  to  con- 
siderable annoyance.  Nominally,  prices  are  now  almost  as  high  as 
in  the  United  States,  but  the  present  low  rate  of  exchange  makes  liv- 
ing agreeably  low  for  the  foreigner.  "  Telegrams  "  turned  in  at  a 
post-office  are  telephoned  to  any  part  of  the  island  in  which  they 
originate,  with  un-Latin  despatch,  at  the  slight  cost  of  fifty  centimes 
(four  cents  at  the  present  exchange)  for  twenty  words.  There  is 
no  cable  service,  however,  between  the  two  islands,  which  have  less 
intercourse  with  each  other  than  with  the  mother  country. 

Schools  are  closely  centralized,  as  in  France,  and  not  particularly 
numerous  or  effective,  though  there  is  less  illiteracy  than  the  census  of 
the  French  islanders  who  helped  to  dig  the  Panama  Canal  seemed  to 
indicate.  Among  the  surprises  in  store  for  the  visitor  is  the  profound 
patriotism  of  almost  all  classes.  Twenty  thousand  Martiniquais  went 
to  France  as  conscripts,  while  the  British  West  Indies  sent  only  volun- 
teers, yet  only  one  British  island  can  in  any  way  compare  with  their 
French  neighbors  in  loyalty  to  the  homeland.  Thus  is  France  rewarded 
for  the  comparative  equality  which  she  grants  her  subjects,  irrespec- 
tive of  color.  While  the  British  segregated  their  West  Indian  troops 
into  the  separate  regiments,  with  white  officers  over  them  and  only  the 
non-commissioned  ranks  open  to  soldiers  of  color,  France  mixed  hers 
in  with  the  poilus,  and  gave  them  equal  chances  of  promotion.  More 
than  one  black  French  colonel  held  important  posts  during  the  war. 
Incidentally,  by  this  intermingling  she  got  considerable  fight  out  of 
her  black  troops,  which  can  scarcely  be  said  of  the  "  B.  W.  I."  regi- 
ments. This  policy,  carried  out  with  what  to  us  would  be  too  thorough 
an  indifference  to  the  racial  problem,  has  at  least  given  her  "  Ameri- 
can "  subjects  a  great  loyalt)'  and  love  for  France. 


472          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

The  nearest  approach  to  a  railroad  station  in  Martinique  is  a  street 
beside  the  post-office  in  the  capital.  There,  at  half-past  two  each  after- 
noon, three  autos  de  poste  set  out  for  as  many  extremities  of  the  island. 
A  throng  of  would-be  travelers,  several  times  larger  than  the  snort- 
ing old  busses  can  accommodate,  forms  a  whirlpool  of  gay  calicos, 
multifarious  bundles,  and  sputtering  patois,  in  which  a  lone  white  man 
seems  strangely  out  of  place.  The  distribution  of  tickets  is  somewhat 
disorderly,  as  one  might  expect,  and  when  the  vehicles  chug  away 
with  their  full,  cramped  quota,  they  are  followed  by  angry  shrieks  and 
gestures  from  the  disappointed.  The  wealthy  few  of  these  hurry  out 
to  the  edge  of  the  savane  to  bargain  for  private  cars,  while  the  majority 
trudge  homeward,  hoping  that  the  morrow  will  bring  better  luck,  or 
wrathfully  set  out  on  foot  for  their  destinations. 

I  won  a  place  one  afternoon  in  the  bus  for  Ste.  Anne,  thirty-five 
miles  away  on  the  southern  point  of  the  island.  The  region  proved 
more  rolling,  less  broken  by  abrupt  hills,  than  the  central  portion. 
Old  kettles  scattered  here  and  there,  the  ruins  of  a  few  windmill- 
towers  and  ivy-grown  brick  chimneys  showed  that  Martinique,  too, 
had  gone  through  a  certain  process  of  centralization  in  her  principal 
industry.  The  sense  of  smell  demonstrated  that  the  larger  and  rarer 
usines  we  passed  gave  their  attention  rather  to  rum  than  to  sugar. 
Beyond  Petit  Bourg  the  plains  bordering  Fort  de  France  Bay  gave 
way  to  a  wilder  landscape,  with  a  rich  red  soil  and  many  by  no  means 
perfect  roads  in  every  direction.  The  turban-coiffed  women  and  bare- 
foot countrymen  tramping  them  had  no  such  fear  of  the  automobile 
as  their  Haitian  cousins,  but  yielded  the  road  to  it  with  a  sort  of 
lofty  disdain.  Everywhere  men  and  women  were  working  side  by 
side  in  the  cane-fields,  which  filled  each  suggestion  of  valley  and  cov- 
ered the  lower  slopes  about  it.  The  appearance  of  the  soil  and  the 
short  joints  of  the  canes  suggested  that  this  southern  region  needed 
irrigation.  Farther  on  came  several  precipices  and  immense  ravines, 
the  mountains  sprinkled  far  and  wide  with  huts  and  little  cultivated 
fields  which  the  irregularity  of  the  ground  gave  every  conceivable 
shape.  Many  of  the  mountaineers,  according  to  a  fellow-passenger, 
own  their  farms,  those  far  back  in  the  hills  being  mainly  engaged 
in  the  cultivation  of  cacao.  We  passed  half  a  dozen  populous  towns 
on  the  way,  that  of  Riviere  Pilote  in  a  setting  of  enormous  black 
boulders  which  carried  the  mind  back  to  Namur  in  Belgium.  A  thorny, 
half -arid  vegetation  stretched  from  there  all  the  way  to  the  petrified 
forest  and  salt  ponds  on  the  southernmost  point  of  the  island. 


RAMBLES  IN  MARTINIQUE  473 

Ste.  Anne  is  a  thatch-roofed  little  village  of  perhaps  a  hundred 
inhabitants,  yet  these  included  at  least  four  grands  blesses,  cripples 
from  the  far  off  battle-line  in  France.  One  blind  youth,  whose  poilu 
cap  looked  pale  above  his  ebony  face,  sat  playing  a  broken  violin  behind 
the  little  hut  in  which  he  was  born.  Yet  he  would  gladly  go  again,  he 
asserted,  if  "  our  dear  France  "  needed  him.  Another  wore  the  khaki 
overseas  cap  marked  "  321  U.  S."  he  had  picked  up  on  the  battlefield 
the  day  he  lost  his  leg.  The  policeman  who  gave  me  a  shake-down 
in  the  hut  from  which  he  ruled  the  community  insisted  on  showing  me 
all  six  of  the  scars  which  decorated  his  black  body,  while  his  female 
companion  displayed  the  fragments  of  shrapnel  that  had  inflicted  them, 
precious  relics  which  she  kept  in  a  broken  pitcher.  He  was  still  fight- 
ing the  war  over  again  when  I  fell  asleep.  Simple-hearted,  obliging 
negroes,  the  citizens  of  Ste.  Anne  evidently  saw  a  white  man  so  seldom 
that  they  were  scarcely  aware  of  the  existence  of  the  troublesome 
"  color  line." 

On  my  return,  I  dropped  off  at  Petit  Bourg  and  walked  out  to  the 
village  of  Trois  Islets.  A  mile  beyond  it,  back  in  a  pretty  little  hol- 
low in  the  hills,  are  the  ruins  of  the  overseer's  house  in  which  Josephine, 
once  Empress  of  the  French,  was  born.  The  walls  of  the  stone  build- 
ing where  her  parents  lived  until  a  hurricane  destroyed  it  just  before 
her  birth,  can  still  be  traced ;  the  kitchen  behind  it  serves  to  this  day 
the  mulatto  family  that  has  built  a  smaller  dwelling  on  the  same  site. 
Farther  back  in  the  valley,  half  hidden  by  tropical  brush  and  clumps 
of  bamboo,  are  the  roofless  remains  of  her  father's  sugar-mill  —  or, 
more  likely,  rum  plant  —  where  she  lived  until  the  age  of  fifteen.  Its 
square  brick  chimney  still  peers  above  the  encroaching  vegetation.  A 
long  line  of  women  were  hoeing  the  cane  on  a  steep  hillside  across  the 
brook,  their  multicolored  garments  standing  out  against  the  Nile-green 
background,  snatches  of  the  falsetto  song  with  which  they  cheer  one 
another  on  at  their  labors  drifting  by  on  the  trade  wind  —  just  such  a 
scene,  perhaps,  as  Josephine  herself  had  known  so  well  in  her  girlhood. 

Marie  Josephine  Rose  Tascher  de  la  Pagerie  was  first  married  to 
the  Vicomte  de  Beauharnais,  son  of  a  governor  of  Martinique.  Her 
mother  lies  buried  in  the  parish  church  of  Trois  Islets,  on  a  little  knoll 
overlooking  the  three  tiny  islands  which  give  the  place  its  name.  A 
stone  set  into  the  interior  wall  of  the  modest  plaster  and  red-tiled  build- 
ing informs  all  who  care  to  read : 


474          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

Ci  Git 

L'Auguste  Madame 
Rose  Claire  Duverger  de  Sanois 
Veuve  de  Messire  J.  G.  Tascher 

de  LA  PAGERIE 

Mere  de  SA  MAJESTfc 

L'IMPERATRICE 

des  FRANCAIS 

Decedee  le  2  Juin  1807 

a  1'age  de  71  ans 

Munie  des  sacrements  de 

L'EGLISE 

But  neither  the  old  municipal  secretary  who  takes  it  upon  himself 
to  have  a  lunch  prepared  in  the  municipal  building  for  all  "  distin- 
guished visitors  " —  thereby  adding  generously  to  his  stipend  —  nor 
the  dwarfish  priest  in  his  garden-framed  residence  behind  the  church 
was  interested  in  Napoleonic  history.  Their  problems  were  more 
modern. 

"  How  can  a  man  live,"  they  condoled  with  each  other,  while  I 
studied  the  decorations  of  the  priestly  parlor,  "  with  rum  advanced 
from  fifty  centimes  to  six  francs  a  liter?" 

Women  carrying  sewer-pipes  and  bricks  on  their  heads  had  loaded 
the  "  canoe  "  which  carries  the  mails  daily  from  Trois  Islets  to  the 
capital  across  the  bay  until  its  gunwales  were  barely  visible  above  the 
water.  When  a  dozen  negro  passengers  and  sailors  had  added  their 
weight  to  this  imminent  possibility  of  disaster,  we  were  rowed  out  be- 
yond the  islets,  where  the  captain  of  the  trusting  contrivance  stood  for 
some  time  at  the  bow  blowing  on  a  conch-shell  for  the  wind  that  at 
length  saw  fit  to  waft  us  safely  across  to  Fort  de  France. 


CHAPTER  XX 

ODDS   AND   ENDS   IN   THE   CARIBBEAN 

THE  Dutch  possessions  in  the  West  Indies  consist  of  six  islands 
in  two  widely  separated  groups.  Curaqao,  Bonaire,  and 
Aruba  lie  just  off  the  coast  of  Venezuela;  Saba,  St.  Eustatius, 
and  St.  Martin  are  scattered  among  the  British  islands  hundreds  of 
miles  to  the  north.  A  colonial  government  for  all  of  them  sits  in 
Willemsted,  chief  and  only  city  of  Curaqao,  and  spreads  its  feelers  of 
red  tape  to  each  small  dependency  and  back  to  the  Netherlands.  Fifty- 
seven  thousand  people  live  in  the  four  hundred  square  miles  of  these 
little  dots  on  the  blue  sea,  but  there  is  a  sharp  line  of  demarkation  be- 
tween the  two  groups,  Dutch  though  they  both  are  in  nationality.  The 
inhabitants  of  the  southern  islands  are  mainly  Venezuelan  in  origin  and 
Roman  Catholic  in  faith;  they  speak  a  manufactured  language  called 
Papiamento,  without  syntax  or  grammar,  and  made  up  of  Spanish, 
Dutch,  English,  and  African  words,  an  unintelligible  jargon  with  a 
teasing  way  of  now  and  then  throwing  in  a  recognizable  word  or 
phrase.  Those  of  the  northern  group  are  English-speaking  and  over- 
whelmingly Protestant.  Of  them  all  Curasao  is  by  far  the  most  im- 
portant, and  the  oldest  of  Holland's  present  colonies.  But  the  mother 
country  rates  her  scattered  islands  in  the  Caribbean  of  slight  importance 
in  comparison  with  her  newer  and  far  larger  possessions  in  the  East, 
Java,  Sumatra,  and  Borneo ;  while  even  Surinam  on  the  coast  of  Brazil, 
with  its  extensive  river  system,  its  gold,  and  its  fertile  soil,  means  more 
to  the  Dutchman  than  all  the  rest  of  his  colonies  in  the  New  World. 

We  sailed  for  Curasao  late  in  April.  The  Caribbean  was  glaringly 
blue  under  the  brilliant  sun,  the  trade-wind  persistently  astern.  On  the 
way  we  passed  not  only  Bonaire  and  Aruba,  dismal-looking  mounds  of 
earth  partly  covered  with  half-hearted  vegetation,  with  Margarita, 
jagged-topped  and  sand-bordered,  surrounded  by  a  strip  of  light  tur- 
quoise water  which  seemed  to  add  attraction  to  its  name  and  typify  its 
tropicality,  and  Tortuga,  low  and  featureless,  melting  into  the  distant 
horizon.  These  last  two  belong  to  Venezuela,  the  fifth  and  last  of  the 
nations  with  possessions  in  the  Caribbean.  Early  next  morning  we 

475 


476  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

were  awakened  by  the  blowing  of  the  steamer's  siren  as  a  signal  to 
Curasao  to  open  the  pontoon  bridge  across  its  narrow  entrance,  and, 
gliding  into  the  bluest  of  lagoons,  wound  a  mile  or  more  up  into  the 
country  before  turning  around  and  returning  to  the  dock.  As  in  Bar- 
bados, one  was  struck  by  the  brilliancy  of  the  atmosphere,  the  lack  of 
restful  shade.  What  trees  there  were  looked  dry  and  scraggly,  the 
country-side  was  everywhere  dead  brown,  arid,  and  bare,  except  for 
great  clumps  of  organ  cactus.  A  road  or  two  wandered  away  over  the 
little  hills,  only  one  of  which  could  be  called  so  much  as  a  peak,  a  tele- 
graph line  of  several  wires  following  the  best  of  them,  though  there  is 
no  other  town  than  the  capital  on  the  island.  One  wondered  why  this 
barren  reef  is  so  thickly  peopled,  or  inhabited  at  all,  how  even  the  few 
goats  in  sight  find  sustenance.  Here  and  there  were  a  few  windmills, 
behaving  with  strict  Dutch  propriety  for  all  the  brisk  trade-wind. 
These,  and  the  irrigation  they  supply,  accounted  for  the  few  tiny  oases 
one  could  make  out  in  the  dreary  landscape.  Yet  the  island  is  un- 
usually healthful ;  with  ten  days'  rain  a  year  few  microbes  can  live,  and 
the  constant  breeze  relieves  in  a  measure  the  heat  of  the  equatorial  sun. 
Ships  tie  up  to  the  docks  in  Willemsted,  which  is  more  often  known 
by  the  name  of  the  island  itself,  yet  such  is  the  formation  of  these  that 
one  must  take  a  punt  ashore,  or  save  ten  Dutch  cents  by  swinging  down 
the  rope  ladder.  Negroes  were  languidly  sculling  about  the  densely 
blue  harbor,  using  the  Dutch  canalboat  style  of  a  single  heavy  oar  over 
the  stern  of  the  boat,  and  swaying  their  bodies  as  slowly  back  and  forth 
as  if  their  vocabularies  did  not  include  the  word  for  haste.  The  town 
crowds  eagerly  about  the  harbor  entrance,  looking  almost  miniature 
from  the  deck  of  the  towering  British  freighter.  The  houses,  distinctly 
Dutch  in  architecture  despite  their  patently  tropical  aspect,  are  well 
built,  rarely  of  wood,  most  of  them  being  faced  with  cement  or  plaster, 
all  brightly  colored,  with  red  or  reddish -brown  tile  roofs,  and  cornices 
of  contrasting  shades,  causing  them  to  stand  out  across  the  indigo  lagoon 
like  the  figures  on  stained  glass  windows.  Now  and  again  the  bridge 
connecting  the  two  halves  of  the  town  broke  in  twain  and  left  a  motley 
throng  gathered  at  each  of  its  entrances.  When  it  was  joined  together 
again  the  procession  across  it  formed  a  veritable  chain  of  human  beings. 
The  one  thing  that  can  induce  the  people  of  Curasao  to  hurry  is  the 
signal  for  the  opening  of  its  bridge.  Then  from  both  directions  comes 
the  scurrying  of  mainly  bare  feet,  jet-black  women  with  great  baskets 
on  their  heads  dart  in  and  out  among  those  racing  from  the  opposite 
shore,  automobiles  honk  their  way  even  faster,  scattering  the  pedestrians 


ODDS  AND  ENDS  IN  THE  CARIBBEAN  477 

in  two  furrows  on  each  side,  despite  the  warning  placard  in  Dutch  and 
Papiamento  to  "  Zeer  Langsam  Ryden  "  or  "  Kore  Poko  Poko."  One 
may,  to  be  sure,  take  a  punt  across,  but  that  costs  ten  cents,  whereas 
the  bridge  fare  is  one  cent  if  barefoot,  two  if  shod,  all  of  course  in 
Dutch  currency,  and  the  whistle  of  an  arriving  or  departing  steamer  is 
sure  to  cause  a  portion  of  the  population  momentarily  to  throw  off  its 
lethargy. 

The  people  of  Curasao  are  less  annoying  than  the  majority  of  those 
in  the  smaller  islands  of  the  Caribbean.  It  may  be  the  proverbial  Dutch 
thrift  which  keeps  the  town  cleaner  and  more  orderly.  The  children 
do  not  beg,  the  adults  appear  occupied  with  their  own  affairs,  and 
though  the  population  is  overwhelmingly  negro,  the  impudence  fre- 
quently met  with  elsewhere  is  not  much  in  evidence.  They  are  amus- 
ingly stolid  negroes,  with  staid  Dutch  airs,  as  solemn  the  week  round  as 
their  British  brethren  on  the  Sabbath,  without  a  suggestion  of  the  chic 
air  of  the  French  islanders.  Unshaved  Hollanders,  with  faces  like 
yellow  old  parchment,  wearing  the  heavy  uniforms  of  their  homeland 
and  carrying  short  swords,  mingle  with  the  black  throng,  but  are  rarely 
called  upon  to  exercise  their  authority.  Dutch  high  officials,  in  more 
resplendent  uniforms,  dash  by  in  fine  automobiles  as  if  bent  on  running 
down  the  people  they  have  been  sent  to  govern. 

Curasao  is  a  free  port,  though  this  does  not  tend  to  lower  its  prices, 
and  trade  is  its  chief,  almost  its  only,  raison  d'etre.  The  clerks  in  the 
stores  glibly  quote  American  prices  to  American  travelers,  but  they  are 
soon  out  of  their  depth  in  English.  Many  of  them  can  converse  fluently 
in  Spanish,  but  the  rank  and  file  knows  nothing  but  Papiamento,  and  is 
astoundingly  voluble  in  that.  Or  it  may  be  that  the  chattering  sounded 
more  noisy  because  it  was  unintelligible,  for  though  any  one  knowing 
Spanish  can  catch  the  drift  of  a  conversation  in  the  native  jargon,  it 
is  quite  another  matter  to  understand  it.  The  men  coaling  ship  were 
constantly  singsonging  it,  but  little  more  than  the  rhythm  was  com- 
prehensible, though  now  and  then  a  familiar  word  burst  out  clearly,  like 
the  face  of  a  friend  in  a  strange  crowd.  Old  women  seated  in  their 
doorways  or  on  the  ground  in  a  patch  of  shade,  weaving  coarse  hats 
from  the  bundles  of  Venezuelan  "  straw  "  which  small  boys  brought 
them  on  their  heads,  chattered  ceaselessly  in  Papiamento  even  in  the 
hottest  hours  of  the  day.  Stolid  Dutchmen  spoke  it  with  accustomed 
ease.  There  were  few  signs  in  the  dialect,  for  it  is  rather  a  spoken 
than  a  written  language,  though  there  is  one  tiny  weekly  printed  in 
Papiamento,  and  two  or  three  books  in  it  may  be  had  in  the  shops. 


478  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

The  names  over  the  latter  are  mainly  Spanish  and  Dutch,  occasionally 
French  or  English;  street  names  are  in  Dutch.  The  daily  newspaper 
is  in  Spanish,  with  some  of  its  notices  and  advertisements  in  Dutch  or 
English.  The  official  bulletin  is  of  course  in  the  official  language,  as 
are  the  placards  in  government  offices.  *  Why  a  few  signs  about  town 
are  also  in  Papiamento  is  a  mystery,  for  the  educated  natives  all  read 
Dutch,  and  the  others  rarely  read  anything  at  all. 

There  are  only  ten  cities  in  the  West  Indies  which  have  tramways, 
and  of  them  all  that  of  Curagao  is  the  most  amusing.  For  it  is  single 
and  alone,  a  crude  little  car  with  an  automobile  engine,  which  makes 
the  horseshoe-shaped  journey  around  the  bay  and  back  every  half  hour. 
Even  in  the  suburbs  the  houses  are  tile-roofed  and  plaster-faced,  gay 
and  cleanly  without,  though  with  the  same  newspapered  interiors  of 
most  negro  shacks  in  the  West  Indies.  The  streets  of  the  town,  fol- 
lowing the  contours  of  the  bay,  are  seldom  straight,  and  the  vista  down 
any  of  them  gives  curiously  mixed  reminiscences  of  Holland  and  at  the 
same  time  of  tropical  cities. 

We  took  the  unescapable  Ford  out  past  the  bulking,  cream-colored 
Catholic  church,  with  its  glaring  whitewashed  cemetery  of  cement  tombs 
decorated  with  tin  flowers  rattling  in  the  breeze  and  a  few  withered 
plants,  to  an  ostrich  farm  in  the  interior.  A  hundred  or  more  of  the 
mammoth  birds,  if  one  count  the  gray,  disheveled  chicks,  live  in  pairs 
or  groups  in  bare  corrals  walled  with  woven  reeds,  and  furnish  their 
Teutonic  owner  a  steady  and  appreciable  income.  A  dozen  American 
windmills  clustered  together  in  a  little  hollow  irrigate  space  enough  to 
grow  the  alfalfa  and  other  green  stuff  needed  for  their  nourishment. 
Yet  even  this  strange  industry  looks  out  of  place  in  so  arid  a  land,  and 
as  one  scurries  over  the  tolerable  roads  which  cover  the  island,  past 
occasional  make-shift  shanties,  jolting  mule-carts,  and  an  endless  vista 
of  bare,  parched  ground  scattered  with  repulsive  forms  of  thorny  vege- 
tation, the  wonder  comes  again  that  this  desert-faced  coral  reef  should 
have  succeeded  in  attracting  human  inhabitants. 

Of  the  unimportant  islets,  keys,  and  rocks  which  we  did  not  visit  for 
lack  of  time,  transportation,  or  inclination,  we  passed  by  with  most 
regret  the  three  Dutch  islands  of  the  north,  for,  this  being  a  strictly 
West  Indian  journey,  we  did  not  pretend  to  touch  that  collection  of 
countless  small  and  smaller  bits  of  land,  all  British,  known  as  the  Ba- 
hamas. Saba  we  saw,  clear  cut  against  the  sunrise,  as  we  steamed 
lazily  on  into  St.  Kitts.  It  is  only  a  mountain-top,  towering  three  thou- 


ODDS  AND  ENDS  IN  THE  CARIBBEAN  479 

sand  feet  above  the  Caribbean,  and  extending  who  knows  how  far 
below  its  surface,  for  the  water  is  very  deep  all  about  this  tiny  patch  of 
five  square  miles.  Cone-shaped,  of  volcanic  formation,  it  rises  abruptly 
from  the  sea  to  the  clouds,  and,  one  thousand  feet  up,  in  what  must 
once  have  been  a  crater,  is  the  only  town,  aptly  named  "  The  Bottom." 
Here  live  some  fifteen  hundred  inhabitants;  another  five  hundred  are 
scattered  about  in  tiny  hamlets  called  "  districts."  The  people  are 
mainly  white,  descendants  of  Dutch  settlers,  though  English  is  the  pre- 
vailing language.  Some  legends  have  it  that  the  Sabans  are  really 
English,  descended  from  the  Devonshire  exiles  of  the  Monmouth  Re- 
bellion, but  with  the  mixture  that  has  gone  on  for  many  generations  it 
is  difficult  to  confirm  this  tradition.  There  is  no  real  harbor;  indeed, 
no  sign  of  "  The  Bottom  "  and  its  people  can  be  seen  except  from  the 
eastern  side.  There  the  "  Ladder  "  of  eight  hundred  steps  leads  from 
the  difficult  landing  to  the  town.  Almost  every  one  lives  high  up  on  the 
cone,  raising  Irish  potatoes,  onions,  and  other  northern  vegetables  in 
the  coolness  of  the  heights.  One  fantastic  tale  has  it  that  supplies  from 
the  outer  world  and  the  inhabitants  returning  with  them  are  hauled  up 
the  slope  in  baskets  attached  to  a  cable  anchored  in  the  town ;  the  un- 
romantic  truth  is  that  the  former  are  carried  up  on  the  heads  of  the 
latter,  or  on  the  little  horses  which  are  equally  skilful  in  climbing  the 
rock-cut  "  Ladder."  Strangely  enough,  Saba  is  famed  for  the  boats  it 
builds,  which  are  constructed  not  at  the  water's  edge,  but  in  "  The  Bot- 
tom." If  he  is  set  on  remaining  in  Dutch  territory,  there  could  be  no 
finer  place  in  which  to  house  the  war  lord  of  the  twentieth  century 
than  the  island  of  Saba. 

St.  Eustatius,  or  "  'Statia,"  as  it  is  familiarly  called,  is  another  single 
mountain  near  St.  Kitts,  an  extinct  volcano  with  its  top  cut  off  and  rising 
from  the  sea  in  magnificent  white  cliffs.  Six  other  islands  and  all  the 
eight  square  miles  of  'Statia  can  be  seen  from  its  summit.  Its  anchor- 
age is  safe,  and  a  steep  path  cut  in  the  face  of  the  cliff  leads  to  Oran- 
gested,  the  capital,  its  old  fort  now  used  as  court  house,  post-office, 
and  prison,  and  the  Dutch  Reformed  church  rising  above  its  ancient 
vaults.  Once  upon  a  time  'Statia  was  a  rich  and  coveted  prize,  and 
many  nations  strove  for  possession  of  the  "  Golden  Rock."  First  colo- 
nized by  the  Dutch,  it  was  successively  seized  by  the  English,  the  French, 
then  went  on  round  the  circle  again,  finally  reverting  to  Holland.  To- 
day its  glory  is  faded  and  gone,  and  with  its  deterioration  its  allegiance 
has  become  a  bit  unsteady.  Emigration  to  the  United  States  is  unceas- 


480  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

ing,  that  to  Holland  is  slight.  The  proportion  of  whites  is  small,  though 
the  local  government  is  well  organized  under  a  governor-general  from 
Holland.  Several  large  dilapidated  graveyards  testify  to  its  one-time 
grandeur  and  activity,  that  of  the  Jews  being  long  unused,  if  any  other 
proof  of  'Statia's  decline  were  needed.  The  limited  rains  and  conse- 
quent lack  of  water  are  largely  to  blame  for  its  rapid  depopulation. 
The  'Statians  drink  rain-water,  gathered  from  the  roofs  and  gutters  and 
hoarded  in  cisterns,  their  animals  the  salty  stuff  from  wells.  A  few 
vegetables,  more  tropical  than  those  of  Saba,  are  grown :  yams,  cassava, 
arrow-root,  sweet-potatoes,  also  a  bit  of  sisal  and  sea-island  cotton. 
Once  St.  Eustatius  was  a  port  of  call  for  South  American  whalers,  but 
even  that  glory  is  gradually  being  wrested  from  it. 

The  island  of  St.  Martin  is  only  forty  square  miles  in  extent,  yet  it 
has  been  a  colony  of  two  great  European  nations  since  1648.  The 
French  and  Dutch  are  reported  to  have  landed  simultaneously.  Said 
they,  "  Let 's  not  fight  in  such  a  climate  over  such  a  bagatelle ;  we  '11 
let  two  men  start  together  and  walk  around  the  island,  and  from  here 
to  where  they  meet  shall  be  the  boundary."  But  the  Frenchman  was 
tall  and  the  Dutchman  short,  so  the  latter  demanded  the  right  to  choose 
the  direction.  This  granted,  he  set  out  to  the  south,  where  the  ground 
was  level  and  fertile.  Possibly  he  stopped  now  and  then  for  a  drink 
with  the  Indians.  At  any  rate,  the  Frenchman  won  two  thirds  of  the 
island.  A  treaty  was  signed,  and  the  larger  portion  of  the  island  long 
flourished  under  a  private  company,  which  eventually  gave  it  to  the 
French  crown.  It  was  several  times  taken  by  the  English,  who,  if 
unable  to  retain  possession,  at  least  left  it  their  language.  Finally,  at 
the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  Victor  Hugues  again  won  it  for  France 
and  divided  it  along  a  rugged  range  of  hills,  giving  Holland  the  south- 
ern third  once  more,  and  annexing  the  French  part  to  the  island  of 
Guadeloupe.  The  terms  of  the  original  treaty  remain  in  force  to  this 
day,  and  the  two  communities  carry  on  their  tiny  share  of  the  world's 
affairs  and  their  common  salt  industry  in  perfect  amity,  despite  their 
two  faiths,  two  sets  of  laws,  and  two  official  languages. 

Rather  because  it  has  long  been  an  habitual  pastime  than  in  the  hope 
of  seeing  the  quest  greatly  rewarded,  I  kept  a  constant  lookout  for 
native  literature  during  our  journey  through  the  West  Indies.  Four 
sections  in  the  Biblioteca  Nacional  of  Havana  are  devoted  to  Cuban 
writers,  totaling  perhaps  five  hundred  volumes.  With  the  exception  of 


ODDS  AND  ENDS  IN  THE  CARIBBEAN  481 

about  a  score  of  these,  however,  the  collection  is  made  up  of  ponderous 
tomes  of  what  might  be  called  history  were  they  not  filled  with  long- 
winded  political  squabbles  completely  devoid  of  interest  to  the  general 
reader,  and  of  slender  volumes  of  the  lyric  poetry  which  pours  forth  in 
a  constant  stream  in  all  Latin-American  communities.  The  latter,  un- 
fortunately, with  their  inevitable  verses  on  the  Niagara  Falls,  the  de- 
tails of  feminine  charms,  and  the  horrors  of  unrequited  love,  are  much 
more  noted  for  their  mellifluous  flow  of  language  than  for  original 
thought  or  imagery.  Of  the  twenty  left,  possibly  five  would  hold  the 
interest  of  American  readers  beyond  the  first  few  pages.  As  "  every 
one  "  writes  poetry,  no  matter  what  his  more  useful  occupation,  there  is 
comparatively  little  work  done  in  imaginative  prose.  Nor  is  there  any 
great  demand  for  such  works;  the  majority  of  Cubans  never  open  a 
book,  and  those  who  do  are  apt  to  turn  to  translations  of  the  trashier 
French  novels.  For,  like  all  Latin-America,  the  island  takes  its  intel- 
lectual cue  from  France ;  the  "  Collection  of  American  Authors  "  in  the 
Cuban  library  contains  the  name  of  no  man  born  north  of  the  Rio 
Grande.  The  natives  themselves  vote  "  Cecilia  Valdes  "  their  best  work 
of  fiction,  though  many  years  have  passed  since  its  writing.  To-day 
three  or  four  residents  of  the  island  are  producing  occasional  volumes 
of  the  usual  Spanish-American  type  of  novel,  over-florid  in  description, 
heavy  with  details,  and  intimate  beyond  the  point  of  decency  according 
to  our  standards,  yet  with  a  nicety  of  style  seldom  attained  by  our  own 
present-day  novelists  and  now  and  then  catching  a  true  reflection  of  a 
tropical  landscape  or  a  native  idiosyncrasy.  Nothing  that  Cuba  has 
produced,  however,  stands  out  in  full  world's  stature,  such  as  "  Maria  " 
in  Colombia  or  "  Innocencia  "  in  Brazil. 

In  Haiti  little  or  nothing  of  an  original  nature  has  been  written.  We 
found  one  small  volume  in  the  native  jargon,  its  name,  "  Cric-Crac," 
quite  aptly  describing  its  contents.  In  Santo  Domingo  there  are  liter- 
ary aspirations  similar  to  those  of  Cuba,  and  as  constant,  if  less  volu- 
minous, a  flow  of  "  poetry."  But  while  several  so-called  novels  have 
been,  and  still  are,  produced,  they  are  worth  reading  only  because  of 
their  scattered  pages  of  often  unintentional  local  color.  Porto  Rico  is 
a  disappointment  in  a  literary  way,  as  in  some  others.  Though  the 
island  teems  to-day,  as  it  has  for  centuries,  with  rich  material  ready 
for  the  picking  by  the  writer  of  fiction,  we  found  nothing  unquestion- 
ably indigenous  of  an  imaginative  character  except  a  collection  of 
"  Cuentos  Populares  "  and  the  inevitable,  almost  maudlin,  verses  of 
scattered  parentage  natural  to  all  Spanish-American  communities. 


482          ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

A  very  readable  little  book  called  "  Phases  of  Barbadian  Life,"  writ- 
ten, however,  by  a  native  of  British  Guiana,  and  two  pamphlet  novels 
on  Trinidad,  were  the  total  reward  of  our  quest  in  the  smaller  English 
islands.  One  of  the  latter,  "  Rupert  Gray,"  by  name,  is  worth  perusal 
for  the  amusing  side-lights  it  throws  on  the  lucubrations  of  the  African 
mind,  by  which  it  was  conceived  and  brought  into  being.  There  is  an 
added  interest  in  reading  these  books,  slight  as  is  their  literary  merit, 
arising  from  the  suspense  in  guessing  whether  the  heroine  is  black, 
"'  colored,"  or  white,  and  the  uncertainty  as  to  the  degree  of  sympathy 
which  should  accordingly  be  shown  for  her  mishaps.  In  Jamaica  a 
man  who  styles  himself  a  "  writer  of  novels  "  rather  than  a  novelist  has 
produced  several  modern  tales  in  which  the  island  life,  traditions,  and 
the  character  of  the  masses  is  portrayed  with  a  facile  touch  in  as  read- 
able a  style  of  the  King's  English  as  may  be  found  anywhere.  Of  them 
all  perhaps  "  Susan  Proudleigh "  and  "  Jane "  are  the  most  nearly 
excellent. 

In  a  bit  of  a  shop  entitled  "  Au  Bon  Livre  "  in  Martinique  we  picked 
up  a  small  novel  based  on  the  disaster  of  St.  Pierre,  called  "  Coeurs 
Martiniquais,"  a  simply  told,  vivid  little  story.  In  the  French  islands 
we  found  also  a  book  in  the  native  patois  entitled  "  Extraits  des  Bam- 
bous,"  but  to  all  outward  appearances  it  was  little  more  than  a  transla- 
tion or  an  adaptation  from  La  Fontaine's  fables.  The  French  and 
British  islands  are  much  less  given  to  perpetrating  poetry  than  those  in 
which  the  Spanish  tongue  is  spoken,  and  show  an  equal  disinclination 
to  producing  the  heavy  volumes  on  subjects  too  ponderous  for  the  au- 
thors themselves  which  burden  the  dusty  book-shelves  of  Ibero- 
American  lands.  On  the  whole,  the  West  Indies  -are  a  virgin  field  for 
the  literary  artist  who  cares  to  turn  his  attention  to  them. 

At  various  periods  during  the  last  hundred  years  "  feelers  "  have 
been  thrown  out  from  one  side  or  the  other  to  sound  the  attitude  to- 
ward the  purchase  of  the  British,  French,  and  possibly  the  Dutch,  West 
Indies  by  the  United  States.  The  more  than  attractive  price  which  we 
squandered  for  the  Virgin  Islands,  together  with  the  recent  suggestions 
of  certain  European  statesmen  that  this  would  be  an  easy  way  for  Eng- 
land and  France  to  wipe  out  some  of  their  crushing  war  debts,  has  re- 
vived the  question,  and  we  found  it  everywhere  a  topic  of  conversation  in 
the  smaller  Antilles.  That  the  mother  countries  themselves  would  con- 
sent to  such  a  bargain,  if  the  price  corresponded  to  the  one  we  recently 
paid  for  vastly  less  valuable  possessions,  is  probable,  despite  the  soothing 


ODDS  AND  ENDS  IN  THE  CARIBBEAN  483 

platitudes  of  princes  and  ministers,  to  the  general  effect  that  "  a  mother 
does  not  sell  her  children."  What  the  islands  themselves  have  to  say  on 
the  subject  is  perhaps  more  to  the  point  in  these  modern  days  of  alleged 
"  self-determination  " ;  and  they  are  backward  in  expressing  themselves^ 

"  In  a  way  we  should  like  to  join  America,"  said  a  white  resident  of 
one  of  the  first  British  islands  we  visited,  "  but  we  have  not  been  en- 
tirely pleased  with  the  way  America  has  treated  her  new  West  Indian 
colonies.  St.  Thomas  was  too  harshly  handled ;  you  should  have  broken 
them  in  gradually  and  left  a  good  impression  on  the  rest  of  us."  (All 
West  Indians  apparently  labor  under  the  impression  that  the  United 
States  is  eager  to  add  them  to  our  population  if  only  the  mother  coun- 
tries and  they  themselves  will  consent.)  "  Then,  too,  we  would  never 
stand  for  prohibition.  The  negroes  would  burn  every  field  of  sugar- 
cane on  the  islands  if  they  were  denied  their  rum.  You  would  have  to 
kill  them  all  off.  A  man,  even  a  woman,  must  have  his  liquor  in  the 
tropics.  Three  or  four  cock-tails  or  whiskies  a  day  take  the  place  of 
the  bracing  cold  of  the  North.  Without  it  the  nerves  go  bad.  We  are 
much  more  in  touch  with,  I  might  even  say  we  have  more  sympathy  for, 
the  United  States  than  for  England,  but  for  those  two  reasons  we  might 
hesitate  to  advocate  American  ownership.  Then,  many  of  the  blacks 
are  against  it  because  they  feel  that  the  United  States  has  never  treated 
the  negro  fairly." 

"  We  are  doing  no  business  except  in  the  absolute  necessities,"  added 
another  white  colonial,  a  man  with  a  string  of  twenty-six  stores  through- 
out the  Lesser  Antilles.  "  With  so  bad  an  exchange  we  can't  buy  in 
the  United  States ;  England  has  never  shipped  us  the  goods  we  want  at 
prices  we  can  pay ;  we  must  wait  until  Germany  gets  back  into  the  mar- 
ket. I  am  almost  the  only  merchant  in  this  island  in  favor  of  transfer- 
ring our  allegiance  to  America.  The  rest  have  a  ridiculous  sentimen- 
tality for  England  or  are  too  conservative  to  know  what  is  for  their 
own  good.  Our  prosperity  would  increase  by  leaps  and  bounds  under 
the  American  flag.  Look  at  the  prosperity  of  Cuba  and  Porto  Rico. 
The  preferential  tariff  has  increased  their  sugar  output  eight  times  over. 
Yet  British  Guiana  alone  could  produce  more  sugar  than  Cuba  under  a 
government  that  would  develop  her  resources." 

The  other  side  of  the  case  was  most  vehemently  espoused  by  a  mu- 
latto journalist  of  Guadeloupe.  His  editorials  accused  the  "  material- 
istic Yankees  "  of  "  wishing  to  buy  the  rest  of  the  world  cheap,"  and 
cited  the  drop  in  value  of  the  franc  and  the  pound  sterling  as  proof  of 
their  nefarious  projects;  for  it  is  a  general  impression  in  the  West 


484  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

Indies  that  the  rate  of  exchange  is  set  by  American  capitalists  quite  at 
will.  In  private  conversation  he  was  more  courteous,  though  none  the 
less  insistent. 

"  We  are  quite  ready  to  admit,"  he  asserted,  *'  that  the  United  States 
would  give  us  more  material  advancement  in  two  years  than  France 
has  in  two  centuries.  We  are  friendly  to  Americans,  grateful  to  them ; 
America  was  the  first  to  give  after  the  Pelee  disaster;  we  might  even 
fight  for  America ;  but  we  feel  a  love  for  France  as  for  a  mother.  We 
are  French  and  we  wish  to  remain  French ;  we  wish  to  keep  our  French 
liberty,  which  is  liberty  as  we  understand  it.  From  our  point  of  view 
the  United  States  is  the  greatest  autocracy  in  the  world ;  it  has  no  real 
republican  form  of  government,  no  real  freedom  of  the  people.  Take 
your  white  slave  law  and  the  prohibition  amendment,  for  example ; 
they  are  abhorrent  to  our  idea  of  liberty.  The  idea  of  a  great  federal 
government  chasing  a  pair  of  lovers  because  they  happen  to  cross  a 
state-line,  or  putting  a  free  citizen  in  jail  merely  for  selling  a  bottle  of 
wine,  a  perfectly  legitimate  action  in  any  part  of  the  world  since  the 
dawn  of  history !  C'est  fantastique.  The  Americans  violate  our  very 
conception  of  civil  liberty.  In  Panama  and  Haiti  they  come  into  a 
house  and  break  up  household  utensils,  throw  disinfectants  about.  We 
grant  that  our  health  might  improve  under  such  drastic  sanitary  meas- 
ures, but  the  suffering  to  our  pride  would  far  more  than  offset  that 
advantage.  And  above  all,"  he  concluded,  "  under  French  rule  we 
people  of  color  have  what  America  never  has  and  never  will  give  us, 
equality  of  opportunity  and  standing  with  the  whites." 

These  two  views  are  typical  of  a  hundred  we  heard  on  the  subject, 
and  form  the  boundaries  of  opinion  among  West  Indians.  Roughly 
speaking,  the  French  islands  and  Barbados,  possibly  Trinidad,  are  de- 
cidedly against  changing  their  allegiance,  and  the  rest  of  the  British 
West  Indies  looks  rather  favorably  upon  the  idea.  When  a  rumor 
came  to  Martinique  soon  after  the  armistice  that  France  was  contem- 
plating such  a  move,  frantic  cables  were  sent  to  Paris,  and  mobs  gath- 
ered before  the  American  consulate.  "  Have  we  not  fought  and  died 
for  France,  not  to  be  thus  treacherously  abandoned  ?  "  demanded  the 
enraged  citizens.  In  Barbados  the  people  froth  at  the  mouth  at  the 
mere  suggestion  of  losing  their  British  standing.  "  Little  England  " 
has  always  been  proud  of  her  loyalty;  when  Charles  I  was  beheaded, 
the  island  was  so  strongly  royalist  that  it  immediately  declared  alle- 
giance to  Charles  II.  Trinidad  is  farther  away  and  has  a  prosperity 
of  her  own,  which  may  be  why  the  problem  is  not  taken  very  seriously 


ODDS  AND  ENDS  IN  THE  CARIBBEAN      485 

there.  Itt  the  other  British  colonies  it  is  largely  an  economic  question, 
with  no  great  amount  of  patriotism  or  sentiment  entering  into  the 
matter.  Scores  of  Jamaican  negroes  replied  to  the  query  of  whether 
they  had  heard  of  the  proposed  change  with,  "  Oh,  we  all  wishin'  dat 
hard,  sir."  Even  Englishmen  living  in  Jamaica  expressed  themselves 
as  feeling  it  would  be  better  for  the  island,  much  as  they  would  regret 
it  from  a  sentimental  point  of  view.  "  The  trouble  with  the  English," 
said  a  Jamaican  of  standing,  "  is  that  if  they  have  a  dollar,  they  put  it 
in  the  bank  and  sit  on  it,  whereas  the  American  makes  it  get  out  and 
work  for  him.  We  are  backward  because  England  will  not  spend  the 
money  to  develop  our  resources.  The  men  who  work  for  the  big 
American  companies  here  on  the  island  get  three  or  four  times  the 
salaries  of  those  employed  by  British  corporations." 

There  are  exceptions  to  the  rule  in  both  groups  of  islands.  Thus 
the  working  classes  are  more  apt  to  favor  the  proposed  change  than  are 
business  men  or  employers.  They  feel  that  the  interests  of  their  group 
are  more  generously  considered  under  the  Stars  and  Stripes.  The 
poorer  white  people  of  the  French  Antilles  are  like-minded  for  another 
reason ;  they  chafe  under  the  overwhelming  political  power  of  the  great 
colored  mass  of  the  population.  Then  there  are  further  ramifications. 
Many  working-men  who  would  otherwise  be  decided  advocates  of  the 
transfer  stick  at  the  American  conception  of  the  color-line.  Strangely 
enough,  prohibition  is  the  hardest  pill  for  many  to  contemplate  swal- 
lowing, which  perhaps  is  not  so  strange,  after  all,  in  countries  where 
the  making  of  rum  is  one  of  the  chief  industries. 

That  there  would  be  certain  advantages  to  the  United  States  in  ac- 
quiring possession  of,  or  political  control  over,  all  the  islands  on  our 
southeastern  seaboard  goes  without  saying.  Politicians  of  "  imperial- 
istic "  tendencies  will  in  all  probability  explain  them  to  us  in  detail  from 
time  to  time  as  the  years  roll  by.  But  there  is  little  doubt  that  they  are 
outweighed  by  the  disadvantages,  at  least  all  those  of  a  material  nature. 
Sentimentally  it  would  be  pleasant  to  see  our  flag  flying  over  all  the 
Caribbean;  it  would  be  still  more  so  to  feel  that  no  European  nation 
has  a  foothold  on  the  western  hemisphere.  That  day  is  in  all  proba- 
bility coming,  though  it  is  still  perhaps  far  off.  As  a  merely  financial 
proposition,  Holland,  France,  and  even  England  could  afford  to  pay 
us  for  taking  their  possessions  in  tropical  America  off  their  hands. 
But  with  the  Virgin  Islands  as  an  example,  we  would  be  paying  dearly 
long  after  we  had  parted  with  any  acceptable  price  which  would  bring 
the  European  West  Indies  under  our  flag.  Merely  to  raise  them  to 


486  ROAMING  THROUGH  THE  WEST  INDIES 

the  American  standard  in  sanitation  would  be  a  colossal  task,  to  say 
nothing  of  adding  materially  to  our  already  troublesome  "  color  ques- 
tion." As  some  joker  has  put  it,  "  We  could  well  afford  to  buy  all  the 
West  Indies  on  the  basis  of  the  price  paid  to  Denmark,  if  the  sellers 
would  agree  to  remove  all  the  population  " ;  any  other  arrangement 
would  probably  prove  a  poor  bargain. 


L .   V 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A     000034385     5 


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